MOSCOW. Feb 17 (Interfax) - The West is stoking tensions around Ukraine by flooding the information space with threats and "scary" reports, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.
"Our troops calmly settled in our own territory, conducted drills, then collected their tents, loaded themselves onto railcars, loaded their hardware, and are starting to disperse," Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow.
"And yet the hysteria continues. The escalation is here, in these very actions galvanizing public opinion with all those threats and scary stories," he said.
"Someone is spreading these lies and initiating these actions in the informational environment," he said.
"I do hope that those shouts and those scary stories won't be used as a pretext for the West to dodge a serious conversation based on our proposals," Lavrov said.