By LORI HIN­NANT and JIM HEINTZ | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Rus­sia ex­tend­ed mil­i­tary drills near Ukraine’s north­ern bor­ders Sun­day amid in­creased fears that two days of sus­tained shelling along the con­tact line be­tween sol­diers and Rus­sa-backed sep­a­ratists in east­ern Ukraine could spark an in­va­sion.

The ex­er­cis­es, orig­i­nal­ly set to end Sun­day, brought a siz­able con­tin­gent of Russ­ian forces to neigh­bour­ing Be­larus, which bor­ders Ukraine to the north. The pres­ence of the Russ­ian troops raised con­cern that they could be used to sweep down on the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal, Kyiv.

The an­nounce­ment came from the de­fense min­is­ter of Be­larus, who said the two coun­tries would “con­tin­ue test­ing the re­sponse forces.”

West­ern lead­ers warned that Rus­sia was poised to at­tack its neigh­bor, which is sur­round­ed on three sides by about 150,000 Russ­ian sol­diers, war­planes and equip­ment. Rus­sia held nu­clear drills Sat­ur­day as well as the con­ven­tion­al ex­er­cis­es in Be­larus, and has on­go­ing naval drills off the coast in the Black Sea.

The Unit­ed States and many Eu­ro­pean coun­tries have al­leged for months that Rus­sia is try­ing to cre­ate pre­texts to in­vade. They have threat­ened mas­sive, im­me­di­ate sanc­tions if it does.

A top Eu­ro­pean Union of­fi­cial, Charles Michel, said Sun­day that “the big ques­tion re­mains: does the Krem­lin want di­a­logue?”

“We can­not for­ev­er of­fer an olive branch while Rus­sia con­ducts mis­sile tests and con­tin­ues to amass troops,” Michel, the pres­i­dent of the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil, said at the Mu­nich Se­cu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence. He said, “One thing is cer­tain: if there is fur­ther mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion, we will re­act with mas­sive sanc­tions.”

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy called on Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin to choose a place where the two lead­ers could meet to try to re­solve the cri­sis. Rus­sia has de­nied plans to in­vade.

“Ukraine will con­tin­ue to fol­low on­ly the diplo­mat­ic path for the sake of a peace­ful set­tle­ment,” Ze­len­skyy said Sat­ur­day at an in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­fer­ence in Mu­nich, Ger­many. There was no im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the Krem­lin.

Sep­a­ratist lead­ers in east­ern Ukraine on Sat­ur­day or­dered a full mil­i­tary mo­bi­liza­tion and sent more civil­ians to Rus­sia, which has is­sued about 700,000 pass­ports to res­i­dents of the rebel-held ter­ri­to­ries. Claims that Russ­ian cit­i­zens are be­ing en­dan­gered might be used as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for mil­i­tary ac­tion.

Of­fi­cials in the sep­a­ratist ter­ri­to­ries claimed Ukrain­ian forces launched sev­er­al ar­tillery at­tacks over the past day and that two civil­ians were killed in an un­suc­cess­ful as­sault on a vil­lage near the Russ­ian bor­der.

U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris on Sun­day em­pha­sized the sig­nif­i­cance of the mo­ment that Eu­rope faces.

“We’re talk­ing about the po­ten­tial for war in Eu­rope,” Har­ris said at the Mu­nich Se­cu­ri­ty Con­fer­ence. “It’s been over 70 years, and through those 70 years ... there has been peace and se­cu­ri­ty.”

Ukraine’s leader crit­i­cized the U.S. and oth­er West­ern na­tions for hold­ing back on new sanc­tions for Rus­sia. Ze­len­skyy, in com­ments be­fore the con­fer­ence, al­so ques­tioned the West’s re­fusal to al­low Ukraine to join NA­TO im­me­di­ate­ly.

Putin has de­mand­ed that NA­TO not take Ukraine as a mem­ber. Har­ris stood by the U.S. de­ci­sion to hold off on sanc­tions but said she wouldn’t sec­ond guess Ze­len­skyy’s “de­sires for his coun­try.”

In new signs of fears that a war could start with­in days, Ger­many and Aus­tria told their cit­i­zens to leave Ukraine. Ger­man air car­ri­er Lufthansa can­celed flights to the cap­i­tal, Kyiv, and to Ode­sa, a Black Sea port that could be a key tar­get in an in­va­sion.

NA­TO’s li­ai­son of­fice in Kyiv said it was re­lo­cat­ing staff to Brus­sels and to the west­ern Ukraine city of Lviv.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said late Fri­day that based on the lat­est Amer­i­can in­tel­li­gence, he was now “con­vinced” that Putin has de­cid­ed to in­vade Ukraine in com­ing days and as­sault the cap­i­tal.

A U.S. mil­i­tary of­fi­cial said an es­ti­mat­ed 40% to 50% of those ground forces have moved in­to at­tack po­si­tions clos­er to the bor­der. The of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss in­ter­nal U.S. as­sess­ments, said the change has been un­der­way for about a week and does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean Putin has set­tled on an in­va­sion.

Lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Moscow and the West re­main open: the Amer­i­can and Russ­ian de­fense chiefs spoke Fri­day. French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron spoke with Putin on Sun­day for near­ly two hours be­fore a call with the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent. U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov agreed to meet next week.

Im­me­di­ate wor­ries fo­cused on east­ern Ukraine, where Ukrain­ian forces have been fight­ing the pro-Rus­sia rebels since 2014 in a con­flict that has killed some 14,000 peo­ple.

Ukraine and the sep­a­ratist lead­ers trad­ed ac­cu­sa­tions of es­ca­la­tion. Rus­sia on Sat­ur­day said at least two shells fired from a gov­ern­ment-held part of east­ern Ukraine land­ed across the bor­der, but Ukraine’s for­eign min­is­ter dis­missed that claim as “a fake state­ment.”

Top Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary of­fi­cials came un­der a shelling at­tack dur­ing a tour of the front of the near­ly eight-year sep­a­ratist con­flict in east­ern Ukraine. The of­fi­cials fled to a bomb shel­ter be­fore hus­tling from the area, ac­cord­ing to an As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ist who was on the tour.

The mil­i­tary on Sun­day closed a key check­point lead­ing to the sep­a­ratist re­gion af­ter it came un­der re­peat­ed shelling.

Else­where on the front lines, Ukrain­ian sol­diers said they were un­der or­ders not to re­turn fire. Za­har Leshushun, peer­ing in­to the dis­tance with a periscope, had fol­lowed the news all day from a trench where he is post­ed near the town of Zolote.

“Right now, we don’t re­spond to their fire be­cause ...” the sol­dier start­ed to ex­plain be­fore be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed by the sound of an in­com­ing shell. “Oh! They are shoot­ing at us now. They are aim­ing at the com­mand post.”

Spo­radic vi­o­lence has bro­ken out for years along the line sep­a­rat­ing Ukrain­ian forces from the Rus­sia-backed sep­a­ratists, but the spike seen in re­cent days is or­ders of mag­ni­tude high­er than any­thing re­cent­ly record­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al mon­i­tors: near­ly 1,500 ex­plo­sions record­ed in 24 hours.

De­nis Pushilin, the head of the pro-Rus­sia sep­a­ratist gov­ern­ment in Ukraine’s Donet­sk re­gion, cit­ed an “im­me­di­ate threat of ag­gres­sion” from Ukrain­ian forces in his an­nounce­ment of a call to arms. Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials ve­he­ment­ly de­nied hav­ing plans to take rebel-con­trolled ar­eas by force.

“I ap­peal to all the men in the re­pub­lic who can hold weapons to de­fend their fam­i­lies, their chil­dren, wives, moth­ers,” Pushilin said. “To­geth­er we will achieve the cov­et­ed vic­to­ry that we all need.”

A sim­i­lar state­ment fol­lowed from his coun­ter­part in the Luhan­sk re­gion. On Fri­day, the rebels be­gan evac­u­at­ing civil­ians to Rus­sia with an an­nounce­ment that ap­peared to be part of their and Moscow’s ef­forts to paint Ukraine as the ag­gres­sor.

Meta­da­ta from two videos post­ed by the sep­a­ratists an­nounc­ing the evac­u­a­tion of civil­ians to Rus­sia show that the files were cre­at­ed two days ago, the AP con­firmed. U.S. au­thor­i­ties have al­leged that the Krem­lin’s ef­fort to come up with an in­va­sion pre­text could in­clude staged, pre-record­ed videos.

Ukraine’s mil­i­tary said two of its sol­diers died in fir­ing from the sep­a­ratist side on Sat­ur­day.

Au­thor­i­ties in Rus­sia’s Ros­tov re­gion, which bor­ders east­ern Ukraine, de­clared a state of emer­gency be­cause of the in­flux of evac­uees. Me­dia re­ports on Sat­ur­day de­scribed chaos at some of the camps as­signed to ac­com­mo­date them.

Putin or­dered the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment to of­fer 10,000 rubles (about $130) to each evac­uee, an amount equiv­a­lent to about half of an av­er­age month­ly salary in east­ern Ukraine.

The sep­a­ratist re­gions of Ukraine, like much of the coun­try’s east, are ma­jor­i­ty Russ­ian speak­ing. Putin on Tues­day re­peat­ed al­le­ga­tions of a “geno­cide” there in ex­plain­ing the need to pro­tect them.

One of the evac­uees, a Donet­sk res­i­dent who iden­ti­fied him­self on­ly as Vy­ach­eslav, blamed Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment for his plight.

“Let them calm down,” he said. “It’s our fault we don’t want to speak Ukrain­ian, is that it?”

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Jim Heintz re­port­ed from Moscow. Mstyslav Cher­nov in Zolote, Ukraine, Geir Moul­son in Berlin, Aamer Mad­hani in Mu­nich, Robert Burns and Dar­lene Su­perville in Wash­ing­ton, Li­u­das Dap­kus in Vil­nius, Lithua­nia, and Yuras Kar­manau in Kyiv con­tributed to this sto­ry.