American diplomats began evacuating the US embassy in Kyiv Saturday amid fears of an impending Russian invasion reached a crescendo – and as Russia itself announced its own partial diplomatic pullout. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed press reports that it would recall staffers from its Ukrainian embassy citing “possible provocations by the Kyiv regime and third countries.” 

“Our American and British colleagues apparently know about some military actions being prepared in Ukraine,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Russian news agency TASS. 

The pullout was seen as a looming signal that hostilities could soon begin. But residents of nearby buildings and a security guard at the embassy said they have seen no sign of an evacuation as yet, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Russia has massed roughly 130,000 troops and a huge arsenal of weapons along Ukrainian borders in recent months, while repeatedly denying that it seeks to invade. 

But the threatening buildup – and recent intelligence indicating that a Russian attack on Ukraine could begin with days – prompted the US and its Western allies to began evacuating their embassies on Saturday 

Nearly 200 American diplomats and staffers were expected to leave Kyiv within hours, some of them to staff a “diplomatic core” in the western city of Lviv, near the border with Poland, the State Department said. 

Nonessential embassy personnel and American diplomats’ families were ordered to leave last month. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced on Saturday that his country’s diplomats will regroup in Lviv. 

Meanwhile, officials from multiple nations – including Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Israel – ordered their citizens in Ukraine to leave as soon as possible. 

At least 7,000 Americans who have registered with the US Embassy are believed to be in Ukraine, even after weeks of warnings that the security situation there was becoming increasingly dangerous. 

Another 25,000 dual citizens who are not registered with the embassy could also soon seek to leave, Fox News reported last week. 

“The feeling is one of stoicism,” Vladislav Davidzon, a Russian-American writer who grew up in Brooklyn, said from Kyiv. “People in bars are skeptical” that Ukraine is once again on the brink of war. 

“It’s a very serious situation, there’s a lot to be afraid of, but [Ukrainians] don’t think it’s imminent. Ukrainians are furious with the use of ‘imminent,’” he said. 

Meanwhile, several British families with newborns were finding themselves stuck in the embattled country – because their tiny would-be travelers lack passports. 

“We’re are in a difficult situation since we do not yet have Douglas’s birth certificate,” said Ken Stewart, 54, a Scottish expatriate who lives outside Kyiv with his Ukrainian wife and their two young children. 

Baby Douglas was born on Monday by cesarean section, and Stewart’s wife Tania was still in the hospital recuperating, the two-time dad told The Sun. 

“So I am waiting until they come home and then I think we may leave and head west, where Tania has relatives, just to be safe,” Stewart said. 

Another British father decried the “bizarre” embassy delays that seemed to be holding up the travel documents for his newborn baby. Londoners Ben and Alice Garrett had their baby boy with a Ukrainian IVF surrogate after arriving in Kiev in December. 

“They want to do a two-hour phone interview with me,” Ben Garret said. “But that’s not until Wednesday” – the very day that US intelligence sources say that Putin could begin to invade.