Ukraine’s General Staff says it believes troops based in Russia’s self-proclaimed republic, which borders southwestern Ukraine near the third-largest city of Odessa, are preparing to carry out “challenges.” of borders. “We have noted the redeployment of Russian troops and units of the so-called Transnistrian-Moldovan republic to show readiness for attack and possibly military action against Ukraine,” the army said in a regular briefing on Saturday. . Ukraine and Russia’s allegations of military action cannot be independently verified. The remarks came at the end of a week in which Russia withdrew troops from the capital, Kyiv, after failing to violate Ukrainian defenses. Ukrainian officials say Russia is refocusing its attack on the Donbas region, where it backed an separatist uprising in two breakaway “democracies” in 2014, the second city of Kharkiv and other areas in the east of the country. “In the east of our country, the situation is becoming very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech released Friday night. “They are preparing for new, strong blows. “We are preparing for an even more active defense.” Russia confirmed this week that it was reducing military activity near Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to focus its efforts on controlling Donbas. On Friday, officials in the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border, blamed Ukraine for a fire at a fuel depot that caused a fire. Kyiv neither confirmed nor denied the attack on Russian territory. The British military intelligence service said the attack would “add additional short-term pressure to Russia’s already strained logistics chains” and that supplies to the forces surrounding Kharkiv could also be affected. Amid military gains in recent days, Ukraine has adopted a tougher rhetorical stance toward Russia following fruitless peace talks in Turkey, where Moscow is pushing Kyiv for territorial concessions and a commitment to neutrality. Zelensky told Fox News in an interview that Ukraine would not cede any of its territories to Russia because its people “would not accept any result” other than victory. “We are not trading our territory,” the Ukrainian president said through an interpreter. “The issue of territorial integrity and sovereignty is out of the question.”

Zelensky also raised the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, which would run counter to Moscow’s central condition for a peace deal. “It is difficult for us to talk about NATO because NATO does not want to admit us,” Zelensky said. “I think it is wrong because if we join NATO, we make NATO much stronger,” he said, adding that Ukraine “is not a weak state.” “We do not propose to make us stronger at the expense of NATO. . . We are not an addition, we are the locomotive, said Zelenski. “I think we are one of the important elements of the European continent.” The statements contradict what Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said after the talks. Medinsky claimed that Ukraine had agreed to Russia’s basic demands not to join NATO and to refuse to host military bases. Zelensky, who has repeatedly criticized NATO for doing too little to help Ukraine, said he had called on the United States to join a future peace deal in a recent conversation with President Joe Biden. Washington, he said, “is considering the proposal.”