A reporter asked Antonov how he could comment on the US statements that doubt the genocide of the Russians in Donbass.
"This causes outrage and indignation. How else can one interpret the shelling of residential areas by Ukrainian Armed Forces using multiple rocket launchers or the discovered mass grave sites of almost 300 civilians near #Lugansk, who were killed only because they considered Russian as their native language?" the Russian ambassador said on late Thursday.
"The United States has to comprehend that there are millions of Russians living in Ukraine whose interests need to be secured and protected. This is the guarantee of Ukraine’s statehood and territorial integrity," he added.
"Here are not only double standards from the US side, but very primitive and rude cynicism. It turns out that Washington's beautiful slogans about the highest value of human rights are not worth a penny. The main geopolitical goal of the United States is to take Russia as far east as possible. And so, a line should be drawn to squeeze [the] Russian-speaking population from their current places of residence. That is why Americans prefer not only to ignore the attempts of violent assimilation of Russians in Ukraine, but also in any way they are subdued by political and military support," the ambassador added.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the atrocities against civilians in Ukraine as genocide. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly warned its Western partners against supporting Kiev's attempts to sabotage the Minsk agreements on Donbass and resolve the crisis in Eastern Ukraine by force. In a recent phone conversation with US President Joe Biden, President Putin mentioned the supply of weapons to Ukraine, which might encourage potential provocations by the Ukrainian armed forces in Donbass and Crimea.
Kiev claims it is not planning any offensive operations in Donbass and that it relies exclusively on diplomatic tools.
However, in violation of the Minsk agreements, the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) were shelled by the Ukrainian army on Thursday in the most intense shelling since April 2021. Local officials have urged international observers to record the attack and take measures to prevent aggression by Ukraine, but in vain.
State Department spokesman Ned Price has accused Moscow of making "false" claims about genocide in eastern Ukraine as a pretext for an "invasion" — a narrative Western states have been actively spreading for the past few months, despite Russia dismissing such allegations as nonsense.
"We urge US Department of State to stop fuelling journalists' 'militarist rage' and focus on truly important issues of the diplomatic settlement of the intra-Ukrainian conflict," the Russian diplomatic mission said on Wednesday.
The self-proclaimed LPR and DPR declared independence in early 2014 after a right-wing nationalist government seized power in Kiev in a US-backed coup and launched an offensive against the Russian-speaking citizens in Donbass, which gets little or no coverage in Western media.