MOSCOW, Feb 17, 2022 (BSS/TASS) - Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova has slammed statements by US officials claiming they have
data about Russia's alleged plans of aggression against Ukraine as
disgraceful.

   In her commentary to the Zvezda television channel that was posted on her
Telegram channel on Thursday, Zakharova drew attention to the fact that
official Kiev, which has for years been lamenting about being a victim to the
Russian "aggression," this time kept on saying it sees not "invasion" and
asked its Western patrons to scale back their rhetoric because it was ruining
everything in Ukraine: from the economy and investments to public order.

   "Maybe, they (in the United States) think it normal to use the situation
for the sake of their own revanche - something went wrong back then and not
it is necessary to set the countries and their peoples at odds again, to
leave people to suffer just to inflate their sense of self-importance.
Moreover, they are ready to go that far as to provide their own president -
the president of the United States - with such twisted fake data," she said.
"They came out one after another - Psaki, Price, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland -
to say that they have intelligence data. What kind of intelligence they were
speaking about? It's nothing but utter disgrace. [Information] that invasion
is inevitable that it is about to happen, but it turns out that there is no
100% certainty that it is inevitable but they know the date: in 48 hours, in
24 hours, or, maybe on [February] 15, or, maybe, 16, or, maybe at one a.m.,
or, maybe, at four in the morning."

   "Is that what they call intelligence? Who does it? Is it what can be
called a great power, which possesses nuclear arms? Is it the leader of the
present-day free world? Is it a developed democracy, which is called to
illuminate the path for all the rest? <...> Where do they get such data to
bake such officials statements for their officials?" she added.

   The West and Kiev have recently been echoing allegations about Russia's
potential invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov castigated
these claims as "empty and unfounded", serving as a ploy to escalate
tensions, pointing out that Russia did not pose any threat whatsoever to
anyone. However, Peskov did not rule out the possibility of provocations
aimed at justifying such claims and warned that attempts to use military
force to resolve the crisis in southeastern Ukraine would have serious
consequences.