Foreign Ministry outraged by media statements about the evacuation of Russian diplomats from Ukraine

Russian Foreign Ministry BuildingMOSCOW, Feb 12Western media statements in January about the «evacuation» of Russian diplomats from Ukraine are stuffed to create a cover for the start of the evacuation of Western embassies from Ukrainian territory, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. She noted that rumors about the alleged «evacuation» of Russian diplomats appeared in a number of Western publications, in particular in The New York Times, almost a month ago during the Orthodox Christmas holidays, when several children of Russian diplomats in Ukraine went to visit their grandparents. «As we now understand, the purpose of these «stuffing» was creation of an information cover for the start of the evacuation by the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries of diplomats and their families from their embassies in Ukraine. Israel announced the evacuation yesterday,» Zakharova said in a comment on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry. In January, the press secretary of the White House Jen Psaki told reporters that the United States has information about Russia's plans to «evacuate» the families of their children. plomats from Ukraine. Earlier, the New York Times, citing a senior Ukrainian security official, reported that Russia was allegedly going to evacuate diplomats from Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Russian Embassy in Kiev is operating normally. Zakharova noted that the American media had lost the culture of checking information; when publishing an «information bomb» about the «evacuation» of Russian diplomatic missions, none of them turned to the Foreign Ministry. The West accuses the Russian Federation of plans to escalate the situation around Ukraine. Moscow categorically denies this and constantly says that no one is threatened, and all such statements are used as an excuse to place more NATO military equipment near Russian borders. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier, Russia does not create any pretexts for a conflict situation around Ukraine. According to him, Russia does not rule out that the hysteria around Ukraine, hyped by the West, is aimed at covering Kiev's line of sabotaging the Minsk agreements on Donbass. According to the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov, the information hysteria of the USA and NATO on Ukraine is generously framed by lies and fakes. because of the words about the date of the Russian attack on Ukraine