The statement of the British Foreign Office about the preparation of a coup in Ukraine is a hoax, and the West may continue to carry out a number of informational provocations and manipulations in the future, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Rossiya TV channel.
In her opinion, London was preparing a stuffing in advance about preparing a coup in Ukraine in the hope that the Russian side would not respond in time. She called the actions of the British foreign office “malicious information aggression.”
«[В информационной среде] preparations are underway, possibly for a number of major provocations. For this, public consciousness, public opinion is being prepared. For the collective West, for NATO, for the Anglo-Saxons, it is extremely important to create an information field, without it they cannot act, ”said Zakharova (quoted by TASS). According to her, Russia does not rule out further large-scale information manipulations and provocations.
Earlier, the British Foreign Office said that Russia hopes to bring a pro-Russian leader to power in Ukraine, the Kremlin allegedly sees former Verkhovna Rada deputy Yevgeny Muraev as such a candidate.
“We have information indicating that the Russian government hopes to install a pro-Russian leader in Kiev as it considers the possibility of invading and occupying Ukraine,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement.
The agency also claimed that Russian intelligence services maintain links with former Ukrainian politicians. Russia called the publication distributed by Britain disinformation and evidence that “it is the NATO countries, led by the Anglo-Saxons, who are escalating tensions around Ukraine.” The department called for an end to provocations, “to spread nonsense and concentrate on studying the history of the Tatar-Mongol yoke.”
British Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab also threatened Russia with sanctions in the event of an invasion of Ukraine and an attempt to establish a “puppet regime” in the country.
On January 22, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the theses of the US State Department, published in the bulletin “Facts and Fiction: Russian Disinformation on Ukraine.” The department said that the content of the bulletin “does not withstand any critical analysis” and presented an analysis of each “fact” from the State Department.
Materials about Russia’s alleged plans to invade Ukraine appeared in the Western media last fall. Thus, Bloomberg, citing US intelligence data, argued that about 100,000 Russian soldiers could invade the territory of the republic from three directions at once. In addition, the media still publish reports of the accumulation of Russian military on the border with Ukraine. At the same time, the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry have repeatedly denied the information that Russia has such plans. They noted that the country moves troops at its own discretion within its territory and is not going to attack anyone.