MOSCOW. Feb 15 (Interfax) - The United States' recent statements on the situation in and around Ukraine are nothing but showy and unwarranted hysterics, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
"Uttering loud words, accusing someone of planning to attack someone, starting to evacuate diplomats, announcing that they would destroy embassy equipment, cut telephone cables, and so on - all of that is showy hysterics, which is not based on anything," Peskov told journalists on Tuesday.
"This is sending shock waves all over the world. Indeed, this is nothing but an absolutely unprecedented campaign to provoke and foment tensions in Europe. We view this as an absolutely deplorable and very bad practice," he said.
"If there were a substantive rather than purely declarative desire to discuss each other's concerns instead of going into that kind of hysterics and launching all those showy destructive information campaigns, the atmosphere in Europe would have been totally different," he said.
Peskov insisted that this is exactly what President Vladimir Putin is seeking.
Peskov described reports by some Western officials naming probable dates of Russia's presumed invasion of Ukraine as "maniacal information madness."
"We can hardly accept this with understanding. There have even been some jokes: they asked whether the exact hour of starting the war had been published anywhere [...] Indeed, it's impossible to accept this kind of maniacal information madness with understanding," Peskov said when asked to comment on statements from some Western representatives who suggested the probable starting date of a war in Ukraine.