US justifies embassy staff pullout

The United States says the diplomatic path remains open to end a standoff with Moscow over Ukraine but that the risk of Russian military action is high enough to warrant pulling US embassy staff out of Kyiv.

That was the message from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after talks on Hawaii on Saturday with Japanese and South Korean counterparts following Washington's warning that Russia's military, with more than 100,000 troops massed near Ukraine, could invade at any moment.

Moscow, which has claimed to be responding to aggression by NATO, has dismissed the warnings as "hysteria."

In an hour-long call on Saturday, US President Joe Biden told Russian opposite number Vladimir Putin that the West would respond decisively to any invasion of Ukraine, which would produce widespread suffering and isolate Moscow.

Putin's message is that Washington has failed to take Russia's main concerns into account.

He is seeking security guarantees from the United States and NATO that include blocking any ideas of Ukraine's joining NATO and refraining from missile deployments near Russia's borders.

Besides the United States, many of Washington's European allies and other countries have scaled back their Kyiv missions and urged citizens to leave Ukraine.

And American staff at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe began leaving by car from the rebel-held city of Donetsk.

The OSCE conducts operations in Ukraine including a civilian monitoring mission in Russian-backed, self-proclaimed separatist republics in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where a war that erupted in 2014 has killed more than 14,000 people.

Australia said yesterday it was evacuating its embassy in Kyiv, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison called on China to not remain "chillingly silent" on the crisis.

President Xi Jinping hosted Putin at the opening day of the Winter Olympics, and they backed each other against the West over standoffs on Ukraine and Taiwan.