MOSCOW, February 4. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called on NATO countries to stop sparking hysteria around the conflict in Ukraine and pumping it up with weapons.

"Once again, we call on NATO countries to cease whipping up hysteria around the Ukrainian conflict and to stop military supplies to and support for Kiev as one of the conflicting parties in the east of Ukraine," she said on Friday.

She noted that the expanding military assistance to Ukraine "is complicating the search for a peaceful solution to the conflict in Donbass." "All this is playing into the hands of Ukraine’s party of war, those people who keep on calling to kill everyone there, to expel those they don’t want to see, to dispose of those who defy," she said.

"We hope that the Ukrainian authorities will stop blindly following their NATO patrons, because it is a path not to an abyss but down from the abyss," Zakharova stressed. "Kiev must demonstrate its independence and begin a full-fledged dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk with the aim of the soonest launch of the process of peaceful resolution of the conflict, as it is envisaged by the approved documents - the Package of Measures, and, United Nations Security Council resolution 2202.".