MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. Russia is urging Western officials to visit not only the Ukrainian side of the contact line in Donbass, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news conference on Wednesday.
She referred to the visits to the contact line by the foreign ministers of Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic on February 7-8.
"It looks like a noble mission. It looks like a start of the process that we have always called for," the diplomat said. "Donning bulletproof vests and helmets, Western diplomats advanced to the line of contact."
"But there’s a small detail: They do it on one side, the side that’s controlled by Kiev. They didn’t go further for some reason."
"This is a line that’s not a red line for us. It needs to be crossed," she went on to say. "I mean the line of contact."
Zakharova said on the other side of the line Western officials would see people that have been suffering for many years because the West inspired Ukrainian politicians to undertake an "unconstitutional coup."
According to Zakharova, despite the work in the region of a large number of international experts, including OSCE observers, Western representatives take pains to turn a blind eye to what is happening in Donbass and avoid visiting Donetsk and Lugansk. "But if you have already traveled that far, why not take this opportunity and talk to people?" she said.
The diplomat also pointed out that the Western society never sees headlines about the humanitarian disaster in Donbass. "It is a noble cause to cover the situation in all corners of the world: Take care of the Uyghurs while being in the US or ask questions about Myanmar while being in Britain," she said.
"But there is one subtle detail: Britain and Ukraine are part of one European continent," Zakharova said. "One way or another, they are neighbors in terms of the common European space."
"So why is London so concerned about human rights situation tens of thousands of kilometers away from Britain, enough to put human rights stories at the top of their news coverage, but when it comes to the immediate neighbor on the continent, a country that has embraced all Western values, they are oblivious to these same human rights?".