Russia-Ukraine updates: US to ban Russian carriers from its airspace

The U.S. and Ukrainian governments are rejecting what they say are false claims from Russia and Russian-controlled separatists in eastern Ukraine of an attack on territory they control.

A State Department spokesperson warned the Russian and separatists' claims are the type of "false flag operation" that Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Russia would use to attack Ukraine.

"Announcements like these are further attempts to obscure through lies and disinformation that Russia is the aggressor in this conflict," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also "categorically" denied claims that Kyiv is preparing an offensive in the provinces, known as Donbas -- calling it "Russian disinformation."

False Russian claims of a humanitarian crisis exploded Friday evening, starting with separatists announcing "mass evacuations" of civilians and flooding Russian state media with footage of children being lined up to depart.

The governor of Russia's Rostov region, which borders Donbas, appealed to Vladimir Putin for help with a "refugee crisis," with Putin dispatching his emergency management minister -- the kind of staged high-level "emergency meeting" that Blinken warned about during remarks to the United Nations Thursday.

"It is also cynical and cruel to use human beings as pawns to distract the world from the fact that Russia is building up its forces in preparation for an attack. Russia is the sole instigator of these tensions and is threatening the people of Ukraine," the State Department spokesperson said.

-ABC News' Connor Finnegan

The White House has announced President Joe Biden's will speak to the nation at 4 p.m. on the Ukraine crisis.

It says he will give an update on "continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy, and Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine."

The remarks will follow a phone call Biden is holding with transatlantic leaders, scheduled for 2:30 p.m.

Earlier Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed U.S. claims Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine within days and reiterated his demand that the Ukrainian government engage in direct talks with Russia-backed separatists.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday that the situation in eastern Ukraine is escalating, amid fears Moscow is seeking a pretext to attack its ex-Soviet neighbour.

"Unfortunately, right now we are seeing, on the contrary, an escalation of the Donbas situation," Putin said at a joint press conference in Moscow on Friday, following a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Putin reiterated Russia's demand that the Ukrainian government engage in direct talks with the Russia-backed separatists in Donbas, a breakaway region of southeastern Ukraine.

"All Kyiv has to do is sit down at the negotiating table with Donbas representatives and agree on the political, military, economic and humanitarian measures to end the conflict," he said. "The sooner it happens the better.”

Russia has demanded for years that Kyiv negotiate with the separatists directly, but Ukraine has always refused because it views them as Kremlin puppets and it would legitimize Moscow's false narrative that the ongoing conflict is exclusively a civil war and does not involve Russia.

Putin also stated that the United States and other members of NATO "are not disposed to properly accept" Russia's key demands for security guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the military alliance pull its troops back from Eastern Europe. He said Moscow will not accept talking about the other proposals the U.S. has put forward without discussing these top requests.

"We are prepared to follow a negotiating track, on the condition that all aspects are considered in a package, not separately from Russia's principal proposals, whose implementation is an unconditional priority for us," he told reporters.

Putin also said he "paid no attention" to the reports in Western media of Feb. 16 being the alleged date of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine that U.S. officials had given, calling it a "hoax."

"I honestly just didn't pay attention to it. There are plenty of hoaxes. Constantly reacting to them is more trouble than it's worth," he added. "We do whatever we see fit and will do so further down the road. Of course, we watch what is going on in the world and around us. But we have clear and comprehensible guidelines that correspond with the national interests of the people of Russia and the Russian state."

Meanwhile, Lukashenko insisted that neither Belarus or Russia want a war and blamed the current tensions on the West. He said the massive joint military exercises currently being held in Belarus with Russia are directed at reinforcing their borders due to "growing military danger," which he claimed was caused in part by Western countries "pumping Ukraine" with weapons.

"With the military danger growing on our borders and Ukraine being pumped with weapons, Belarus and Russia are forced to look for appropriate ways to repel potential attacks," Lukashenko told reporters.

But the Belarusian leader also warned that, for the first time in decades, Europe is on the edge of a conflict that could "draw in almost the entire continent."

"You see that it does not depend even on our neighbors, including Ukraine, anymore. It is also obvious to you who the exacerbation of tensions near our borders depends on," Lukashenko said. "For the first time in decades, we have ended up on the verge of a conflict, which, unfortunately, is capable of drawing in almost the entire continent, like a vortex."

"Today, we're witnessing, in all its glory, irresponsibility and, forgive my frankness, the stupidity of a number of Western politicians," he added, "and the behavior denying logic and reasonable explanations of the leaders of our neighboring states and their downright morbid desire to walk right on the edge."

-ABC News' Anastasia Bagaeva and Patrick Reevell

The United States is "deeply concerned" that Russia "has embarked on" the wrong path, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.

Speaking to reporters at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Blinken said Russia has deployed "additional forces" near neighboring Ukraine, "including leading edge forces that would be part of any aggression." When asked about the reports of more shelling in eastern Ukraine, Blinken said it's "part of a scenario that is already in play" for Moscow to claim a pretext for invasion.

"Even as we are doing everything we possibly can to make sure that this diplomatic path, that this has to resolved -- differences have to be resolved through dialogue, through diplomacy," Blinken told reporters, "we are deeply concerned that that is not the path that Russia has embarked on and that everything we're seeing, including what you've described in the last 24 to 48 hours, is part of a scenario that is already in play of creating false provocations, of then having to respond to those provocations and then ultimately committing new aggression against Ukraine."

Still, Blinken said he remains "hopeful" that the threat of sanctions and the supply of military aid to regional allies from the U.S. and others "will have an impact."

-ABC News' Conor Finnegan