MOSCOW. Feb 16 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry urges everyone to stop believing Washington's statements on the situation over Ukraine and calls "nonsense" the claims about an allegedly prepared Russian invasion.
"People need to stop believing everything they say in Washington, especially with regard to Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, and Russia," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on the YouTube channel belonging to Ukrainian journalist Anatoly Shariy.
"On the one hand we should probably calm down and stop running around with wooden assault rifles and paper pistols, but on the other hand we need to wake up and realize that when they promise something for free and when they entice you to an imaginary paradise, it has the good old-fashioned name of mousetrap," she said.
"As a matter of fact, that is, unfortunately, what is happening to the Ukrainian people, who are being dragged into this mousetrap very actively, with promises of manna from heaven, promises of everything free - loans, everything quickly. That cannot be true, and it only happens in a mousetrap," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
"Now everyone is telling us, vying with one another, about how great Ukraine's military potential and military might have grown in two months. But it does not matter that the statements of [White House press secretary Jen] Psaki, [U.S. National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan, [U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned] Price, and the United States president, and of course Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken have ruined the investment part of the Ukrainian economy - the very part that [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky was staking on. It does not matter that people have been driven to the point of a real neurosis, it does not matter that people have already started dying in Ukraine not from natural causes, and certainly not in the fight to defend their homeland, but simply from heart attacks. But they have allegedly built up some military potential," Zakharova said.
"But let's face it! The Ukrainian people will pay for this military potential, this junk that has now been delivered to Ukraine. Once again, this is yet another mousetrap with free cheese - indeed, it's free, it's just going to cost a lot. For all thisy, Ukraine is sinking deeper and deeper into debt," she said.
"Everyone in Ukraine needs to calm down, listen less to all this nonsense and, of course, stop reading all the howling coming from the West," Zakharova said.