Moscow Condemns Western Attempts to Manipulate Facts Over Ukraine Crisis

MOSCOW, January 27 (Sputnik) – Western countries are trying to replace real effort aimed at resolving the Ukrainian crisis with “cynical manipulation of facts,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

“It seems as if the West is attempting to replace a serious political process, aimed at a long-term solution of the crisis in Ukraine, with tactics of cynical manipulation of facts,” the ministry said in a statement.

At the same time neither Washington nor Brussels have made attempts to call on Kiev to stop the shelling of residential areas in eastern Ukraine, the ministry said.

In April 2014, a military confrontation erupted in Ukraine, plunging the country into crisis, when Kiev sent troops to eastern Ukraine to suppress independence supporters in Donetsk and Luhansk. In September, the warring sides reached a ceasefire agreement with the mediation of Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), but multiple violations have been reported ever since.

The beginning of 2015 saw a sharp increase in violence in southeastern Ukraine, with the city of Mariupol being shelled, leading to dozens of casualties among the civilian population. Both the Donbas militia and the Kiev forces have accused each other of being responsible for the attack.

The West has accused Moscow of escalating the situation in Ukraine through training and equipping pro-independence militia, but Russian authorities have denounced the allegations as groundless.