MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the United Kingdom’s special services are plotting provocation in Lisichansk similar to that in Bucha, Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Saturday.
The representatives of mass media outlets that took part in the staged footage in Bucha have arrived in the city.
"In Lisichansk, in the Lugansk People’s Republic, the SBU members jointly with the UK’s special services are preparing another fake video. To this aim, representatives of Ukrainian and Western mass media outlets have arrived in the city in advance, they had earlier made staged photo and videos in Bucha," said Mizintsev, who also heads Russia’s Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.
The military official noted that these fake reports by the Kiev authorities about the alleged "atrocities" of Russia are planned to be broadly spread in Western media soon.
He added that Kiev intentionally creates conditions for provocations by Ukraine’s security services on Easter in order to activate a new wave of Russophobia in Ukraine and abroad. "The provocative actions are made amid the Kiev regime’s campaign in Ukrainian news outlets on accusing Russia of allegedly organizing ‘missile bombardments of religious facilities’," the military official who also heads Russia’s Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine said.
According to him, the provocations also aim to discredit Ukraine’s Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. He noted that "the bishops of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church received recommendations from the office of President Vladimir Zelensky not to conduct traditional Easter festivities overnight on April 23-24, replacing them with online broadcasts of services in churches." "While such notices were intentionally not sent to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in order to organize the mass gatherings of believers in the churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate," he added.
According to Mizintsev, Ukrainian special services prepare provocation with use of chemical substances in Odessa port to pin the blame on Russia. Ukraine is likely to set off explosion at cold storage facility in Odessa port, on April 18 cistern with ammonia was delivered.
On April 3, the Russian Defense Ministry refuted the Kiev regime’s accusations of an alleged massacre of civilians in Bucha, a town northwest of Kiev. The military agency said that the Russian Armed Forces had left Bucha on March 30, while "the evidence of crimes" emerged only four days later, after Ukrainian Security Service officers had entered the town. The ministry stressed that on March 31, the town’s Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk confirmed in a video address that there were no Russian troops in Bucha. However, he did not say a word about the civilians shot dead in the street with their hands tied behind their backs. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov castigated the episode in Bucha as a "fake attack.".