MOSCOW. Feb 15 (Interfax) - Russia will be doing in its territory what it deems to be necessary for national security, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
"The speculative claims that the Russian-Belarusian exercise has been organized to attack Ukraine from the north and take over Kyiv, all those completely paranoid scenarios have been published many times, and by respectable media outlets," Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow.
As to the Western call for withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border and stopping the exercise, Lavrov said, "Russia has made its plans and is sticking with them."
"In our territory, we will do whatever we need, whatever we deem necessary for our security, and we reject the attempt of our Western colleagues to interpret the OSCE principle and obligation to ensure indivisible security in a way that they allegedly know better how to provide the security of Russia," Lavrov said.
"It's time to wrap up some of the exercises, and they [troops] are returning to base," he said.
Lavrov said he was still expecting to hear Western claims that Russia got scared and met every demand after pressure was applied and "Biden told it to stand down."
"That's untrue talk mastered by our colleagues. We should probably learn their tricks," he said.
A Polish journalist asked Lavrov whether the invasion was cancelled after all. Lavrov nodded repeatedly, laughed and told the Polish foreign minister, "Your journalist seems to be a bit slow."