MOSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. The West is inflaming the current outbreak of hysteria by evacuating diplomats from Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.
"The West, of course, is inflaming hysteria, evacuating [the diplomats] and at the same time, pumping [Kiev] with weapons and constantly inciting the Ukrainian elite. Although the Ukrainian elite, in my opinion, is already a little scared by the fact that the West has started to intimidate too much," the top diplomat noted.
"[Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, Foreign Minister [Dmitry Kuleba], Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council [Aleksey Danilov] and Defense Minister [Aleksey Reznikov] are saying that they do not see anything special, [the Russian forces] are on their own territory <…>, so there is no need to aggravate the situation, one needs to calm down. But the West does not want them to calm down, and is not willing to calm itself down, that’s the point," Lavrov insisted.
"The West is looking forward to some real provocation," the Russian top diplomat emphasized. According to him, European countries are trying to provoke "Kiev to launch a military operation in Donbass," or in another way finally "bury" the Minsk accords.
Evacuation of diplomats
As many as five countries, namely Austria, the UK, Germany, Canada and the US, are evacuating some of their envoys and their families from Ukraine. On Tuesday, the Kyodo news agency, citing sources, revealed that Japan was considering the need to evacuate its citizens, including the embassy staff. The Austrian Foreign Ministry said that it was also considering the possibility of evacuating its diplomats from Kiev, noting that such a decision would be made if necessary and depending on the situation in Ukraine.
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.