MOSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. Western countries are goading the Ukrainian regime into committing direct incitement against Russia, the nation’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a plenary session of the State Duma.

"Lately, the US and its European allies who have fundamentally forgotten the culture of diplomacy, have been doubling down on their efforts to contain our country. In addition to illegitimate unilateral sanctions, they are intensifying military and political pressure on Russia. It is enough to look at the increasingly provocative military drills near our borders, at the regime in Kiev being dragged into NATO’s orbit, the deliveries of lethal weapons to it and it being prodded to carry out direct provocations against Russia. So, given this background, the demands addressed to us to cease military exercises on our own soil, which we are fully and indisputably entitled to, sound particularly cynical," he stressed.

"Those with pro-Western inclinations led by the US attempt to counter the objective flow of history, seek to secure their one-sided advantage," the Russian top diplomat added.

Lately, Ukraine and the West have been increasingly echoing claims of an alleged possible Russian "invasion" of Ukraine ever more frequently. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov branded such information as an "empty and groundless" escalation of tensions, emphasizing that Russia does not pose a threat to anyone. That said, he didn’t exclude the possibility of provocations being whipped up in order to justify such claims and warned that attempts to resolve the problem in southeastern Ukraine through the use of force would have the most serious consequences.