MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that unscheduled NATO drills in the Black Sea posed a serious challenge for Moscow and that Russia had nothing to do with the crisis on close ally Belarus's border with the European Union.

In comments published on the Kremlin's website, Putin said he hoped that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel would speak directly about the crisis and that the migrants primarily wanted to go to Germany.