MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/. Russia will likely advise non-essential staff of its diplomatic missions in Ukraine to leave the country amid the actions of Anglo-Saxon colleagues, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday at a press conference following talks with UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss.
"By the way, we also started thinking about it, maybe it is the Anglo-Saxons who are plotting something if they are evacuating their staff? We looked at their actions and, probably, we will also advise non-essential staff of our diplomatic missions to return home for a while. I don’t know what our Anglo-Saxon colleagues are up to," the Russian top diplomat noted.
Concerns over Moscow's alleged preparations for an invasion of Ukraine have been increasingly expressed in the West and in Kiev recently. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov castigated these statements as an empty and groundless escalation of tension, emphasizing that Russia posed no threat to anyone. At the same time, the Kremlin press secretary did not exclude some possible provocations to justify such claims and warned that the attempts to resolve the Ukrainian conflict by force would carry extremely serious consequences.