The spokesperson for Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky says the president’s request for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin went unanswered amid rising tensions at the two countries’ shared border. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov denies having received the request and maintains that it is within Russia’s rights to deploy troops within its own territory as it sees fit. According to The Guardian, Russia now has eighty thousand troops stationed in the Ukrainian border region, its largest deployment in the area since it invaded Crimea in 2014.