Moscow Condemns Western Attempts to Manipulate Facts Over Ukraine Crisis
MOSCOW, January 27 (Sputnik) – Western countries are trying to replace real effort aimed at resolving the Ukrainian crisis with “cynical manipulation of facts,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
“It seems as if the West is attempting to replace a serious political process, aimed at a long-term solution of the crisis in Ukraine, with tactics of cynical manipulation of facts,” the ministry said in a statement.
At the same time neither Washington nor Brussels have made attempts to call on Kyiv to stop the shelling of residential areas in eastern Ukraine, the ministry said.
The fighting in southeastern Ukraine’s Donbas region has intensified in recent weeks, driving up the civilian death toll. On January 13, the shelling of a bus in the Donetsk Region town of Volnovakha killed 13 civilians. Last week, at least eight Donetsk residents were killed in a shelling of a trolleybus stop.
On January 24, the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol was shelled, with the Kyiv forces and Donbas independence supporters trading the blame for the attack. The shelling left 30 people dead and over 90 injured.
The warring sides agreed to a ceasefire back in September 2014 in Minsk, with talks mediated by Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), although ever since then the opposing parties have accused each other of violating the truce.