NATO Chief to Visit Ukraine amid Russia Border Tensions

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will visit Kiev Thursday, Ukraine's foreign ministry said, amid heightened tensions over allegations Russia is massing troops along its ex-Soviet neighbor’s border.

The visit, at the invitation of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, is intended to discuss an upcoming meeting on NATO-Ukraine partnership, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.

Ukraine is not a member of the 28-nation alliance, and both sides say that Kiev joining the organization is not on the cards.

NATO on Wednesday accused the Kremlin of bolstering its troop numbers on the Ukraine border to 20,000, from 12,000 in mid-July, creating a "dangerous situation" and stoking concerns Moscow could intervene in its neighbor by force.

"We share the concern that Russia could use the pretext of a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission as an excuse to send troops into eastern Ukraine," NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said.

Russia denies that it had increased the number of its troops on the border. Defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenikov was quoted on Wednesday as saying by the Interfax news agency that "movements of such forces of thousands of troops and equipment is not possible in such a short time".

NATO has consistently backed up Kiev's allegations that Moscow has fomented and armed pro-Russian rebels battling government troops in east Ukraine for almost four months.

The UN says the fighting in east Ukraine has killed over 1,300 people and forced some 285,000 people to flee their homes.

Rasmussen recently ratcheted up the rhetoric over the Ukraine, saying in an interview published on Sunday that NATO would draw up new defense plans in the face of "Russia's aggression".

Canada unveiled a new round of sanctions Wednesday against Russian officials, banks and companies while vowing to curb oil sector technology exports over Moscow's support of rebels in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Russia's "continued illegal occupation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and its provocative military activity in eastern Ukraine remains a grave concern to Canada and the international community."

Named in this 11th round of economic sanctions and travel bans were top Russian security and intelligence officials, the president of Chechnya, and several businessmen.

The new sanctions also target several banks, Dobrolet Airlines, the United Shipbuilding Corporation, as well as Ukrainian separatist leaders and organizations.

The latest additions bring the total number of Russians and Ukrainians facing sanctions to more than 100.

Harper said Ottawa is "also committed to imposing the necessary regulations to enact export restrictions on technologies used in Russia's oil exploration and extraction sector."

"Those will be implemented in parallel with our allies," he said.