Lavrov: Russia to reply to U.S. on security guarantees issue on Thursday

Russia will send a reply to the United States on the issue of security guarantees on Thursday, the TASS news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.

Speaking at a joint news conference following talks with his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio on Wednesday, Lavrov said that Moscow will make the letter public. Russia has demanded that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO, something that Washington and Brussels have so far refused to promise.

“We believe that it is absolutely necessary to make sure that those members of civil society in our countries who are interested in the matter are able to figure out what is going on and what position each of the parties advocates because otherwise, if kept secret, which is what our colleagues in Washington and Brussels prefer to do, then the public will be overwhelmed with the lies and outright propaganda that have been filling the media space in terms of developments in Europe, and on the border between Russia and Ukraine,” the Russian top diplomat emphasized.

On his part, the Italian minister said “I think it’s very good news, a very good signal”.

The United States and NATO handed their written responses to Russia’s initiatives on security guarantees proposals over to Moscow on January 26, 2022.

 Russian diplomat slams US statements on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as disgraceful

Meantime, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed statements by US officials claiming they have data about Russia’s alleged plans of aggression against Ukraine as disgraceful.

In her commentary to the Zvezda television channel that was posted on her Telegram channel on Thursday, Zakharova drew attention to the fact that official Kiev, which has for years been lamenting about being a victim to the Russian “aggression,” this time kept on saying it sees no “invasion” and asked its Western patrons to scale back their rhetoric because it was ruining everything in Ukraine: from the economy and investments to public order.

“Maybe, they [in the United States] think it normal to use the situation for the sake of their own revanche – something went wrong back then and not it is necessary to set the countries and their peoples at odds again, to leave people to suffer just to inflate their sense of self-importance. Moreover, they are ready to go that far as to provide their own president – the president of the United States – with such twisted fake data,” she said. “They came out one after another – Psaki, Price, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland – to say that they have intelligence data. What kind of intelligence they were speaking about? It’s nothing but utter disgrace. [Information] that invasion is inevitable that it is about to happen, but it turns out that there is no 100% certainty that it is inevitable but they know the date: in 48 hours, in 24 hours, or, maybe on [February] 15, or, maybe, 16, or, maybe at one a.m., or, maybe, at four in the morning.”

The West and Kiev have recently been echoing allegations about Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov castigated these claims as “empty and unfounded”, serving as a ploy to escalate tensions, pointing out that Russia did not pose any threat whatsoever to anyone. However, Peskov did not rule out the possibility of provocations aimed at justifying such claims and warned that attempts to use military force to resolve the crisis in southeastern Ukraine would have serious consequences.

Anti-Russian hysteria prevents US from being objective about Ukraine situation — embassy

Moreover, the Russian embassy in the United States said that the ongoing anti-Russian hysteria in the United States does not allow US officials to look at the situation around Ukraine objectively.

“We paid attention to the statements made by the U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned Price, voiced on February 16 in an interview with CNN. The official once again tried to accuse Russia of spreading disinformation on the situation in Ukraine,” it wrote on its Facebook account. “It is obvious that the flywheel of the anti-Russian hysteria spinned in the United States does not allow American colleagues to look at things objectively. Self-hypnosis about the inevitability of the Russian attack persists.”

“It got to the point where on the eve of the interview with Ned Price, CNN, during a live stream from Kiev literally launched a countdown to the fake invasion, scheduled by the TV channel for the morning of February 16th,” the embassy noted.

The embassy has called on the US Department of State “to stop fueling journalists’ “militarist rage” and focus on truly important issues of diplomatic settlement of the intra-Ukrainian conflict.”

Price claimed earlier that instead of deescalating the situation around Ukraine, Russia continues to deploy more troops to the border.

Agencies