Kirby rejected the version that the new “threat” to the United States from Russia was invented for the sake of Ukraine. The Kremlin previously suggested that the White House is trying “by hook or by crook’ to push Congress to vote on a bill to allocate money for Ukraine.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov emphasized that such messages from the U.S. fit into the trend of the last decade, when Americans are “engaged in malicious writing.”