The latest developments in the growing conflict between Russia and Ukraine:
* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted Saturday he authorized Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to send U.S.-made anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine as Ukraine’s tensions with neighboring Russia continue to escalate. Blinken also thanked the former Soviet Republics and NATO members for their continued support of Ukraine.
* A senior State Department official told VOA Saturday that no order has come down, when asked if families of U.S. Embassy personnel in Ukraine has been ordered to begin evacuating as soon as Monday. CNN and Fox News were reporting Saturday the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv asked the State Department for authorization to allow all non-essential staff and their families to leave.
* U.S. Secretary of State Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for about 90 minutes Friday in Geneva to discuss the increasingly high-stakes standoff over Ukraine. Both officials, refusing to budge on core demands, left the talks promising only to keep talking.
* The West is demanding that Russia pull its troops and weapons away from the Ukraine border while Moscow is pushing for NATO to curtail its operations in eastern and central Europe. Russia also insists that the Western defensive alliance reject Ukraine’s membership bid, a move the U.S. calls a “non-starter.”
* U.S. officials say Russia has amassed nearly 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, including in Belarus and in occupied Crimea.
* U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be against international law and appealed for calm. "I'm convinced it will not happen and I strongly hope to be right," he said.
VOA’s Margaret Besheer contributed to this report. Some material for this article came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.