MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/. Members of the Western media "physically do not give themselves the opportunity to face the truth" and read the materials about Donbass provided by the Russian side, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday at a presentation for an information brochure entitled "25 Questions about Crimea."

The diplomat said that during preparations for Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's press conference on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, a CNN journalist approached her and asked questions about the situation in Ukraine. "I said that there was a Russian position, and suggested showing it to her and pointed out that it even was in English. I gave her the phone, she read the text, but she would not look at the pictures and clips," Zakharova continued, "This is the first time I saw a journalist ask a question and turn away from the material they are given."

Zakharova also noted that Western journalists "physically do not give themselves the opportunity to look at the truth. "They [in the West] have nurtured tens of thousands of journalists who have learned not to see the problem and to turn away. They have basically raised thousands of social workers and humanitarians, who have learned not to see that there are problems with the killing of children, and with the destruction of civilian infrastructure. They have learned how to bypass situations, not just crises, but those where people could not survive for several years," Zakharova said, "I think that the history of the 20th century, not to mention the 21st century, did not know such a thing. This is the same Western - political, public, journalistic - machine that elevates humanitarian situations tens of thousands of kilometers away from their capitals, in countries they don't even know their own name, to the rank of its own problems."

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to the appeal of the leaders of the republics of Donbass, decided to conduct a special military operation. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow's plans do not include the occupation of Ukrainian territories. The goal is the demilitarization and denazification of the country. The Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.