MOSCOW, May 15. /TASS/. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov has denied the presence of Russian military in Donbas.
Earlier, interviewed on Germany’s ZDF television channel Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko claimed that as many as 11,000 Russian troops were allegedly present in the southeast of Ukraine.
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"Ukrainian officials of various rank invariably step up this juggling with figures, ostensibly showing ‘a Russian military presence’ in Donbas, on the eve of major international events. This time NATO’s summit in Antalya, fruitless for the authorities in Kiev, was such an occasion," Konashenkov said.
He believes that the current statistics tricks as staged by some Kiev officials were very reminiscent of what had sometimes been said during the notorious witch-hunt in the United States in the 1950s. The American people then were being told no end of "reds-under-the-beds" stories. The chief ideologist of that campaign, Senator Joseph McCarthy easily juggled with the number of those involved in un-American activities, sometimes mentioning different figures several times during one day," Konashenkov said.
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time," Konashenkov said, quoting a famous saying by Abraham Lincoln.