Stephen Harper is heading to a crucial summit of NATO leaders where the Western military alliance will give itself the power to respond to threats more quickly in the face of Russia’s continued effort to destabilize and break up Ukraine. 
 
 NATO leaders are set to approve a rapid-reaction military force, drawn from their respective defence capabilities, that could be deployed to a crisis in Eastern Europe within two days, alliance officials say. This “spearhead” unit would have a permanent command centre staffed by rotating alliance members as well as supply depots located in various regions so troops would not have to fly in all their equipment. 
 
 “This spearhead … could include several thousand troops, ready to respond where needed with air, sea and special-forces support,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference Monday in Brussels. 
 
 NATO’s existing response force takes five days for the first units to arrive. 
 
 This summit, originally meant to mark the end of the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, will instead signal a shift to the defence of Europe as the alliance’s central concern once more. 
 
 Mr. Harper departed Ottawa Tuesday morning for the U.K. He'll first visit London‎ to promote bilateral trade and investment in light of the Canada-European Union free-trade deal and then proceed to a Cardiff-area resort in Wales for talks with NATO member country leaders. 
 
 The rapid-response force would not help Kiev, which has been battling pro-Moscow rebels for months after Russia unilaterally seized Crimea this spring and now has Vladimir Putin pressuring it to discuss “statehood” for southeast regions of Ukraine. 
 
 Canadian officials, speaking on background, made it clear that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has no plans to deploy troops to Ukraine, which is currently taking steps to apply for membership in the Western military alliance. It’s unclear if, or when, Kiev might be admitted into the club, which has an agreement to defend member countries against attack. 
 
 NATO appears to have shelved a proposal to permanently station alliance troops in new bases along its eastern flank, a measure sought by members such as Poland as a means of providing a deterrent to further Russian aggression. Member countries such as Germany rejected the idea because such a move could provoke Moscow. 
 
 The rapid-reaction force, which could serve as a deterrent in its own right, appears to be a compromise. NATO officials said the force could grow from a small number to as large as a brigade, which would mean between 3,000 and 5,000 troops. It means NATO would be ready to quickly respond to Russian aggression that goes beyond Ukraine, which the alliance has confirmed with satellite imagery is now fighting Russian troops, and not just pro-Moscow rebels, on its own soil. 
 
 Canada will be asked to contribute soldiers and equipment to NATO's new high-alert force. 
 
 But the Canadian government refused to say Monday whether it would contribute on a regular basis to this rapid-reaction force, with officials saying only they would “consider all measures accordingly and look forward to discussions at the summit.” 
 
 The alliance, said Fen Hampson, director of the Global Security and Politics program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont., “is divided between its East European and Baltic members who are deeply worried that Putin won’t stop with Ukraine if he gets what he wants, and its major powers, Germany, the U.K. and France, who continue to believe that Putin is amenable to negotiation and persuasion.” 
 
 Canada was also wary of the proposal to permanently station NATO troops in new bases because there was insufficient detail on which allies might pay the bills or contribute troops and what the rules of engagement would be. “None of that was clear,” a Canadian official said. 
 
 The Harper government, expected to go to the polls in 2015, is also balking at a push for NATO countries to boost military spending to at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product. The British government is calling for this commitment at the summit. Britain is among a small minority of NATO members that currently spend 2 per cent or more of GDP on defence, while Canada spends roughly 1 per cent. 
 
 Canadian officials defend their position, saying the NATO pledge goes beyond what Canadian taxpayers would support. They say Canada shouldered a big burden with its decade-long Afghanistan deployment and its contribution to Operation Protector in Libya. 
 
 The Harper government has chopped military spending to balance the books, and a recent study said on an inflation-adjusted basis that Canada’s defence budget is now smaller than it was in 2007. 
 
 Ottawa has a ship, six fighter jets and rotating shifts of Canadian Armed Forces members on training exercises in Europe to help reassure NATO member countries concerned about further Russian aggression in the region. It’s also matched sanctions imposed on Russians and Ukrainians linked to Moscow’s efforts to menace Ukraine. 
 
 Mr. Hampson said the summit marks a watershed moment for the alliance. “NATO is facing its greatest crisis since the Berlin and Cuban crises of the Cold War,” he said. “NATO can show that it is a real alliance that is prepared to stand up to Putin’s incursions, or it can fade into oblivion by issuing more frothy communiqués that commit its members to little.” 
 
 Editor's note: An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that the next federal election is in 2016. This version has been corrected to say the vote is in 2015. ||||| KIEV/MOSCOW Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia on Monday of "direct and undisguised aggression" which he said had radically changed the battlefield balance as Kiev's forces suffered a further reverse in their war with pro-Moscow separatists. 
 
 In the latest in a string of setbacks in the past week, Ukraine's military said it had pulled back from defending a vital airport in the east of the country, near the city of Luhansk, where troops had been battling a Russian tank battalion. 
 
 Poroshenko said in a speech there would be high-level personnel changes in the Ukrainian armed forces, whose troops fled a new rebel advance in the south which Kiev and its Western allies say has been backed up by Russian armored columns. 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin, who called on Sunday for immediate negotiations on the "statehood" of southern and eastern Ukraine, blamed Kiev's leadership for refusing to enter into direct political talks with the separatists. 
 
 European Union leaders decided at a summit on Saturday that the direct engagement of Russian troops in the war - still denied by the Kremlin - called for a stepping up of economic sanctions unless Moscow pulled its soldiers back. 
 
 With German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressing that accepting Russia's behavior was not an option, EU ambassadors were to start discussing a new package of measures that could include a ban on Europeans buying Russian government bonds, EU sources said. 
 
 Until last week Ukraine had appeared close to crushing the four-month rebellion in the east, which erupted after a pro-Moscow president was forced out of power by popular protests. But then the rebels opened a new front to the south on the coast of the Sea of Azov, pushing towards the city of Mariupol. 
 
 AGGRESSION 
 
 Poroshenko repeated Kiev's belief that Russian forces are helping the rebels to turn the tide of the war. "Direct and undisguised aggression has been launched against Ukraine from a neighboring state. This has changed the situation in the zone of conflict in a radical way," he said in his speech at a military academy in Kiev. 
 
 Defense Minister Valery Heletey added on his Facebook page that Ukraine no longer faced a threat from separatists but outright war with Russian troops. "Unfortunately, in such a war, the losses will be numbered not in their hundreds, but in thousands, even tens of thousands," he said. "We must refrain from panic and show that Ukrainians are not about to surrender." 
 
 In the Belarussian capital, Minsk, separatists sat down for preliminary peace talks with Ukraine, saying they would be prepared to stay part of Ukraine if they were granted "special status", according to Russian news agencies. 
 
 But they said one of their key conditions would be for Kiev to immediately end its military offensive. 
 
 The separatists' demands did not appear, at first sight, to be acceptable to Kiev since they would leave the rebels in control of the territories of Ukraine's industrialized east and exercising a trade policy tilted towards Russia and away from integration with the European Union, which is Kiev's key aim. 
 
 Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Ukrainian forces had pulled back from the airport near Luhansk. However, they had destroyed seven Russian tanks and identified a major build-up of Russian forces to the north and south of the city. 
 
 "According to our operational data, there are no fewer than four (Russian) battalion-tactical groups in Ukraine," he told reporters, adding that each one comprised 400 men. 
 
 Speaking during a visit to Siberia, Putin repeated his call for talks. "The current Kiev leadership does not want to carry out a substantive political dialogue with the east of its country," state news agency Itar-Tass cited him as telling journalists. 
 
 Putin also said the separatists were trying to force Ukrainian troops from their current positions where they were firing on civilian targets. "The aim of the militia fighters is to push away these armed forces and their artillery to not give them the possibility to shoot on residential areas," he said. 
 
 NON-ALIGNED STATUS IN DOUBT 
 
 Kiev has clung to a non-aligned status as it tried to steer between two dominant powers - Russia to the east and Europe to the west. However, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Ukraine's political leaders expect a new parliament to abandon this status after an election next month in a possible prelude to an application to join the Western alliance. 
 
 Putin made his statehood remarks two days after comparing the Kiev government with Nazis and warning the West not to "mess with us". On Sunday, Putin's spokesman said his call for talks on the statehood of southern and eastern Ukraine did not mean Moscow now endorsed rebel calls for independence for territory they have seized. 
 
 However, Merkel took a hard line, although she acknowledged the sanctions have hurt German exporters to the Russian market. 
 
 "I have to say there is also an impact when you are allowed to move borders in Europe and attack other countries with your troops," she told a news conference. "Accepting Russia's behavior is not an option. And therefore it was necessary to prepare further sanctions." 
 
 EU leaders asked the executive European Commission to prepare further sanctions within a week, building on steps taken at the end of July, which targeted the energy, banking and defense sectors. "I'm hearing that a ban on buying Russian government bonds could be in the next package," an EU official familiar with the preparations said. 
 
 The July round forbade Europeans from buying or selling new bonds, shares or other financial instruments with a maturity of more than 90 days issued by major state-owned Russian banks. 
 
 COMMON SENSE 
 
 Putin called for the EU to think twice about stepping up the sanctions, which were first imposed after Russia's annexation of Ukraine in March. "I hope that common sense will prevail and we will work in a normal modern way," the Interfax news agency reported him as saying. 
 
 He won support from China, with which Putin wants to trade more as the West tightens its restrictions. 
 
 "A political solution is the only way out. Sanctions do not help to solve the underlying problems in Ukraine," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. 
 
 Several EU countries heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria, opposed new measures, which require unanimous agreement. 
 
 "I consider sanctions meaningless and counterproductive," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Sunday. "I reserve a right to veto sanctions harming national interests of Slovakia." 
 
 The EU could ban gas exports and limit industrial use as part of emergency measures to protect household energy supplies this winter as it prepares for a possible halt in Russian supplies due to the crisis, a source told Reuters. 
 
 The United States and EU already extended sanctions after a Malaysian airliner was shot down over rebel territory in July, killing 298 people. Moscow has responded by banning the import of most Western foodstuffs and shutting down McDonald's restaurants but so far energy shipments to the EU have been unaffected. 
 
 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there would be no military intervention from Russia in Ukraine. Moscow denies the presence of Russian tanks and troops there, despite what NATO and Western governments have said is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Richard Balmforth in Kiev, Mark Trevelyan and Thomas Grove in Moscow, Noah Barkin in Berlin, Jan Strupczewski, Adrian Croft and Martin Santa in Brussels and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Writing by David Stamp; Editing by Giles Elgood) ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption Tensions between Russia and Nato countries are high over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine 
 
 Russia is to alter its military strategy as a result of the Ukraine crisis and Nato's presence in eastern Europe, a top Russian official says. 
 
 Mikhail Popov, a Kremlin adviser, said that deteriorating relations with the US and Nato would be reflected in the updated strategy. 
 
 Nato said on Monday it would boost its presence in eastern Europe to protect its members. 
 
 Ukrainian troops are battling pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine. 
 
 About 2,600 people have died since fighting began in April. 
 
 Ukraine's defence minister on Monday accused Russia of launching a "great war" that could claim tens of thousands of lives - claims dismissed by Russia, which denies actively supporting the rebels. 
 
 'Aggravating tensions' 
 
 Mr Popov, deputy secretary of Russia's National Security Council, told Russia's RIA news agency that "the military infrastructure of Nato member states" was "getting closer to [Russian] borders, including via enlargement". 
 
 Nato's actions were one of the key "external threats" to Russia, he said. 
 
 "Nato's planned action... is evidence of the desire of US and Nato leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia", Mr Popov said. 
 
 There were no details on how the doctrine might change. 
 
 Analysis - Jonathan Marcus, diplomatic correspondent 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Russia has indicated it will respond to Nato's increasing presence in eastern Europe 
 
 Almost on the eve of Nato's summit gathering in Wales, the Russian government has signalled that it will respond to Nato's plans to make preparations to deploy crisis response forces to Eastern Europe, closer to Russia's borders. 
 
 Nato insists that while there will be pre-positioned supplies and more exercises in Poland for example, these will not be permanent new bases. But that is not going to cut much ice in Moscow. 
 
 The comments by the top Kremlin security adviser Mikhail Popov has signalled that these new Nato deployments, along with missile defence plans and the Ukraine crisis, will play into a review of Russia's own defence planning. 
 
 Moscow is getting its retaliation in first with the stage set for worsening tensions between Russia and the Nato alliance. 
 
 There are growing questions now as to just how far the Kremlin is prepared to go in seeking to influence the Ukraine fighting on the ground. 
 
 Nato announced its plans on Monday for a rapid response force of several thousand troops to protect eastern European members against possible Russian aggression. 
 
 The force, to be made up of troops provided by member states on a rotating basis, would be able to be deployed within 48 hours, Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nato Secretary-General Rasmussen: "We must face the reality that Russia does not consider Nato a partner" 
 
 Military equipment and supplies would be pre-positioned in member states in the east so the force could "travel light, but strike hard if needed", he added. 
 
 Mr Rasmussen insisted that the plans would not breach the 1997 Nato-Russia Founding Act, which forbids the presence of permanent bases in eastern and central Europe. 
 
 The new measures are set to be approved at a Nato summit in Wales this week. 
 
 'Runway destroyed' 
 
 The Nato security alliance covers 28 member states, including Eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic. It does not include Ukraine. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption David Stern reports on Ilovaysk, a town soldiers say was emptied by pro-Russian rebels 
 
 Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk has said that he aims to put the country on the path towards Nato membership. 
 
 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said such efforts were "undermining" attempts to reach a peace deal with the rebels. 
 
 Crisis talks between Ukraine officials, rebels and Russian envoys ended without agreement on Monday. 
 
 Ukraine's army has been forced to retreat amid a series of gains by pro-Russian rebels in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and further south around the port of Mariupol. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Residents shelter from artillery fire in a basement on the outskirts of Donetsk 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption The UN estimates that at least 260,000 people have been displaced in Ukraine 
 
 Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that 15 servicemen had been killed in the past 24 hours, with another 49 wounded. 
 
 On Monday, Ukraine's army said it had been forced to withdraw from Luhansk airport after it was attacked by Russian tanks. 
 
 The acting Luhansk region administration chief Irina Verihina told Ukraine's 112 TV: "Our troops have withdrawn, but the runway is completely destroyed. There's no way planes can land there." 
 
 The UN's refugee agency estimates that at least 260,000 people have been displaced inside the country, with most of those affected from eastern Ukraine. 
 
 Meanwhile, more than 800,000 Ukrainians, mainly ethnic Russians, have arrived in Russia since January this year, bringing the total number of people displaced by the conflict to more than a million, it added. 
 
 'I can take Kiev' 
 
 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has accused Russia of "direct, overt aggression against Ukraine". 
 
 Russia has repeatedly denied Ukrainian and Western accusations that it is providing troops and equipment to the rebels. 
 
 Meanwhile, a Russian official responded to allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin had commented: "If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks." 
 
 The reported comments were said to be made in a phone call to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and were reported in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper. 
 
 Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters that whether or not the words were spoken, the quote "was taken out of context and had a totally different meaning". 
 
 Russia's strained relations with Nato
– Tough talk as NATO-Russia relations continue to deteriorate: NATO leaders, who meet in the UK later this week, are planning a "rapid reaction" force that can deploy to Russia's worried Eastern European neighbors within 48 hours, reports the New York Times. The "spearhead" force would have a permanent command center to allow it to respond swiftly to threats, the Globe and Mail notes. "This spearhead ... could include several thousand troops, ready to respond where needed with air, sea, and special-forces support," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. The NATO summit in Newport, Wales, is especially important because "Russia thought it can change the borders of a sovereign European country by force, and this is happening not very far from NATO's borders," says Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas, calling for fresh plans to ensure all members of the alliance are "equally and strongly protected." Russian defense chiefs, meanwhile, say NATO's actions are "evidence of the desire of US and NATO leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia" and that Moscow plans to craft a new military doctrine in response to NATO plans and the Ukraine crisis, the BBC reports. In Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia of "direct and undisguised aggression" yesterday as government forces continued to suffer reverses, including a retreat from the Luhansk airport, where the Ukrainian military says a Russian tank battalion supported pro-Russia rebels, Reuters reports.