Baltic and central European leaders said on Thursday that Lithuania cited Russian military strikes from Belarus, as the European Union is being attacked on multiple fronts by Russia and must unite behind new economic sanctions.
The warnings at the EU summit were some of the most direct in recent weeks, as the United States and NATO allies try to deter Russian attacks on Ukraine and reduce Moscow's margin for surprise.
According to a draft final statement by Reuters, the EU leaders will warn of the massive consequences if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
We are facing a lot of attacks. I see them all as associated, Latvia Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins told reporters, listing Middle Eastern migrants sent by Belarus to EU borders, artificially high natural gas prices orchestrated by Moscow and Russian disinformation.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said any dispute with Russia needed to be resolved by peaceful means, as Russia's Baltic neighbours tried to press home what they saw as Moscow's attempts to blur the line between peace and war.
"We are probably facing the most dangerous situation in the last 30 years, but I am talking about not only Ukraine but the eastern flank of NATO," said Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, a day after EU leaders held a summit with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in Brussels.
Ukraine is currently the main conflict between Russia and the West. The United States says Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders, possibly in preparation for an invasion. Moscow says its actions are purely defensive and accuses Kyiv and the West of provocative behaviour.
I'm worried because the military concentration is very strong, particularly on the Ukrainian border with Russia, said Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, as he arrived for the one-day summit.
He said that Russia is using military power to make sure that we are prepared to avoid such surprises during the occupation of Crimea and that Russia has seizure of the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Since then, NATO has tried to destabilise the West with new nuclear weapons, cyber attacks and covert action, which Moscow denies.
The EU, along with the United States, imposed economic sanctions on Russia and targeted its energy, banking and defence sectors in response.
Jansa said that it was possible to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany from becoming operational.
Latvia's Karins accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to use the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a sort of blackmail against the EU, claiming falsely that if we want to have more gas we have to open up to Nord Stream 2. Russia is ready to work with the West on European security proposals despite differences between the two sides, the Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday.