MOSCOW, February 28./TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed confidence on Monday that experiments of NATO and Western public’s staying mum on the situation in Donbass resulted in a humanitarian and political disaster in Europe.

"NATO’s experiments and the deafening silence of the Western public - these are the reasons behind the humanitarian and political disaster in Europe. An end was to be put to this, since the West refused to conduct any negotiations whatsoever and welcomed aggressive statements and direct threats of Kiev puppets towards Russia," the diplomat wrote on her Telegram channel.

Russia did not launch a war, it is ending it, Zakharova stressed. Throughout these years, the Russian side was urging the global community to stand against the consistent annihilation of the Donbass population. "These are millions of people, who were losing their loved ones every day, living in basements to flee the shelling," she added.

"Where were all these countries and their public during these eight years that the war continued, and how did they condemn the killing of at least 13,000 people throughout these years?" the diplomat asked.

None among those who are ‘yelling now’ in ‘civilized countries’ has ever rallied to support the population of Donetsk and Lugansk with the demand to stop bloodshed, she stressed. "The world was silent. Submissive silence of the global community and their disregard for the bloody catastrophe resulting from the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine in 2014, staged with the direct participation of the US, the EU, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and other NATO countries, simply encouraged the Kiev regime to continue to destroy their own population," Zakharova stressed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the leaders of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation. The Russian head of state stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later on Thursday that Russian troops were not delivering strikes against Ukrainian cities. It emphasized that Ukrainian military infrastructure was being destroyed through the use of precision weapons. Civilians are not threatened, the Russian military assured.