MOSCOW, January 23. /TASS/. The UK Foreign Office deliberately planned its information attack concerning Moscow’s alleged plans of installing a pro-Russian government in Ukraine obviously hoping that the Russian side will not be able to respond immediately, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

"Today, the British Foreign Office staged an information attack. The most interesting about it is how it was done. They posted materials about Russia’s alleged plans of organizing a coup in Ukraine on official sites. <…> The text was prepared beforehand and it might have been posted on Saturday, in the afternoon or in the evening. But, instead, they opted for what they thought to be a more convenient time - when it was 01:30 a.m. in Moscow," she said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 television channel. "They might have thought we would not respond and shared this information with the mass media. <…> We did respond and will always respond."

She slammed the British Foreign Office’s actions as a willful information aggression. "First aggression, then a coup - the assortment is being expanded to keep this topic in the public eye endlessly," she added.

The UK Foreign Office said earlier that Russia’s government is seeking to install a pro-Russian government in Ukraine, with former member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) Yevgeny Murayev as its head.

Commenting on this statement, the Russian foreign ministry called on the British colleagues to stop indulging in provocations.