“Our strategic opponents want neither peace nor any implementation of the Minsk accords. They are working hard to make sure that the shellings of Donbass [by Kiev forces] continue so that they could portray Russia as the biggest threat to global peace,” Leonid Slutsky, who heads the State Duma’s committee on CIS affairs, told RIA Novosti news agency.
“One such strategic lie was exposed when French MPs visited Crimea after which European media stopped publishing all kinds of tall stories about some “massive Russian military presence in an occupied Crimea.”
“If another lie about Russia allegedly having a hand in the Ukrainian conflict is laid bare too, then the whole [anti-Russian campaign] they have been waging since the end of 2013 will start falling apart,” Slutsky added.
Denis Pushilin, an official representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic at the Minsk talks, had earlier urged the “Normandy Four” to respond to the Kiev forces’ massive shellings of Donbass.