Russian MoD: Kiev Prepares New Provocations to Accuse Russia of Violence Against Ukrainian Civilians

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier slammed the provocations in Ukraine's Bucha and Kramatorsk as outrageous, saying they were staged by Ukraine specifically for western media.

Kiev is preparing new provocations with a goal to accuse Russia of violence against Ukrainian civilians in the Sumy region, according to the head of Russia's National Defense Management Centre, Mikhail Mizintsev.

He said that the "staged provocations" in the north-eastern region of Ukraine are being prepared by the Kiev regime under guidance of British special services.

"Representatives of Ukrainian and western media have been invited to the city of Seredina-Buda in the Sumy region, which was previously under the control of Russian troops, to film the staged stories," Mizintsev said during a briefing. "At the same time, to conceal the provocation and prevent it from being exposed by real witnesses, a curfew was introduced in the city, and the local population was forcibly evicted from the places where filming is set to take place."

Mizintsev went on to break down the scenario of the provocation, saying that "British directors" are collecting bodies in the basement of a residential building in one of the towns in the Sumy region, with the corpses to be presented later as the alleged victims of the Russian troops. According to the scenario, Mizintsev said, the Russian military allegedly committed mass killings and atrocities when leaving the region.

"Yet another fake will be promoted by western media in the near future," Mizintsev said. "Its goal is to inflame Russophobia further amid the rapidly developing economic crisis in Europe."

He pointed out that Russian troops left the region in question around three weeks ago, on 20 March.

"If such events had really happened they would have become public knowledge in such a long amount of time," he said.

The top Russian military official went on to say that French gendarmes who have arrived in Ukraine will engage in concealing war crimes committed by forces loyal to Kiev and making accusations against Russia.

According to Mizintsev, they will focus mainly on hiding "a number of war crimes against the population of Ukraine," particularly of Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, that were committed by the Ukrainian authorities over the past eight years, as well as the fabrication of charges against the Russian armed forces.

Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, speaking on Monday conveyed to the UN that Kiev was preparing new provocations. He also referred to the earlier provocation in Bucha, saying that more evidence has emerged pointing to the fact that the situation in this Ukrainian city was staged.

Moscow also views the attack on the train station in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk as one of such provocations. Both Bucha and Kramatorsk provocations were denounced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as "outrageous". He also did not rule out that more provocations will be staged by the Ukrainian military in the coming days.

However, Lavrov noted, Russia would respond to them with facts.