KIEV, February 10./TASS/. The Russian Embassy in Kiev is considering the temporary departure from Ukraine of its nonessential staff, a source from the Russian Embassy told TASS on Thursday.

"The issue of nonessential personnel of the embassy leaving Ukraine for a while is actively looked into," the diplomat said.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the ministry would advise the nonessential staff of the embassy in Ukraine to leave the country temporarily, given what Western embassies were doing.He also slammed rumors proliferating in the media that Russia was allegedly gearing up for an operation to take Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, to organize a coup in Ukraine.

Evacuation of diplomats

The US, Australia, the UK, Germany, Canada, and Japan earlier said they were evacuating some of their envoys and their families from Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities see this decision as premature with no real reasons for that.

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.