The United States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia in an attempt to reassure NATO’s Eastern European members worried aboutRussia’s military operations in and nearUkraine, Western officials said Friday.

The United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union reached an agreement here on Thursday evening that calls for armed pro-Russian bands to give up the government buildings they have seized in eastern Ukraine and outlines other steps to de-escalate the crisis.

Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, was in China Tuesday. During his visit, Lavrov held meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as well as President Xi Jinping. According to a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lavrov’s visit was primarily designed to “lay the groundwork” for President Vladimir Putin’s scheduled visit to China in May.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned Ukraine is "on the verge of civil war." The Kremlin said Putin made the comment in a telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the situation there.

Despite much diplomatic effort, the situation in Ukraine worsens. A coordinated Russian campaign, including an invasion threat, special operations destabilization in eastern Ukraine patterned on the Crimea model, and warnings of gas cutoffs document ever more clearly Vladi­mir Putin’s aim to cripple the Ukrainian government and control much or even all of this strategically vital European country.

More than two decades after the Cold War supposedly came to a peaceful conclusion,Russia’s encroachment on Ukrainian sovereignty and its outright annexation of Crimea have occasioned a retro flashback. A byproduct of this geopolitical turmoil is NATO’s renewed importance to foreign policy.

With support growing for independence just months before Scots decide whether to break up with Britain, outsiders are weighing in with impassioned calls to keep the three-century-old union together.