MOSCOW, May 1. /TASS/. Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups are plotting an artillery shelling of civilians during the mass west-bound evacuation from Kharkov, said Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center.

"The Kiev government keeps plotting heinous and brutal provocations with mass deaths of civilians, with the goal of subsequently blaming them on the Russian armed forces," he said.

"To that end, units of the Ukrainian armed forces have positioned artillery weapons near the settlement of Tsupovka in the Kharkov Region in order to shell civilians, evacuating in large numbers via the west-bound humanitarian corridor from Kharkov, established by the Ukrainian side," Mizintsev continued.

"The Russian side has conclusively established that neo-Nazis plan to put this monstrous, murderous plot into practice very soon," the official added.