MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Moscow even now urges Washington to behave prudently and refrain from unwise steps, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin said at the Valdai International Discussion Club on Wednesday.

The senior Russian diplomat thus responded to a question from TASS to comment on Russia’s potential reaction, if the United States greenlights Kiev’s request for the delivery of THAAD anti-ballistic missile defense systems to Ukraine.

"Even now we urge our American colleagues with whom we are holding a dialogue at various levels, even at the highest level, to refrain from unwise steps, act prudently and not exploit the situation in order to bring it further to a deadlock, from which it will be hard to find a way out," the deputy foreign minister cautioned.

"We will use further diplomatic methods on our part while our colleagues will apparently take care of other methods," he said.

A diplomatic source told TASS on February 7 that Kiev had requested Washington to deploy several battalions of THAAD missile defense systems near Kharkov. As Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, the deployment of these missile systems in Ukraine will be yet another step towards destabilizing the situation.

The THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptor is a road-mobile surface-to-air missile system designed to intercept short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the endo- or exo-atmosphere in their terminal flight path at the last minute of approaching the target.