The Kremlin rejects American warnings of a Russian attack on Ukraine and accuses the neighboring country of seeking a military offensive against the pro-Russian “People's Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said on state television that Ukraine wanted to use violence to solve "its own problems" in Donbas.
Friedrich Schmidt
Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.
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The American warnings, which have been sketching the danger of a new Russian military offensive against Ukraine for almost a month, are "hysteria". The news portal Bloomberg reported that Washington had provided the European allies with reconnaissance data including maps showing a concentration of Russian troops and artillery.
A scenario is being discussed in which 100,000 soldiers from Russia, Belarus and the annexed Ukrainian Crimea would attack.
Experts speculate about what Putin wants to achieve with the concentration of troops.
Peskow rejected the Bloomberg report on Monday;
the media service is being used for a "targeted information campaign" trying to portray Russia as a threat to the peace process in Ukraine.
Peskov again accused the government in Kiev of "aggressive thoughts" to solve "the problem of the southeast" of Ukraine.
"Provocative NATO maneuvers"
Russia's foreign intelligence service SWR compared the situation in Ukraine with that of Georgia in 2008, which is a disguised threat of invasion: Before the war at that time, Moscow had distributed passports to the residents of the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and then justified the intervention with the protection of its citizens. Now Moscow has naturalized hundreds of thousands of residents of the "People's Republics". Last Thursday, Putin himself accused the Americans and their allies of not taking Russia's “red lines” in Ukraine seriously. He complained about "provocative" NATO maneuvers and deliveries of modern weapons to Kiev.
At the same time, Moscow is launching diplomatic efforts. Last week the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published an exchange of letters between Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Foreign Ministers of Germany and France. This concerns proposals for a final declaration for a meeting in the so-called Normandy format, which last met in December 2019. In their correspondence, Heiko Maas and Jean-Yves Le Drian reject the formulation proposals of the conflict as “inner-Ukrainian” and the demand for a “direct dialogue” between Kiev and the “People's Republics”.
Lavrov said that the reason for the “non-standard” publication of the letters was that he was fed up with his colleagues.
Paris and Berlin complained about the violation of diplomatic customs, Putin's spokesman praised a “brilliant move”: the “underhanded situation” required “non-traditional, decisive action”.