DHAKA: Ukraine’s foreign minister denounced Russian ‘provocations’ on Monday, warning of a troop build-up on the border and the presence of ‘political tourists’ in its eastern regions.

‘We are very much concerned by the number of Russian troops on the (border),’ Ukraine foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsya said after talks with Nato head Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Kiev’s interim government was also worried by ‘the number of Russian political tourists in eastern Ukraine regions and with the number of provocations Russians are trying to organise’, Deshchytsya said, reports The Straits Times.

He said the situation looked very similar to that in Georgia in 2008 when Russia sent in troops to secure the independence of two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

BDST: 1914 HRS, MAR 17, 2014