The United States government has warned this Friday that Russia is planning a false sabotage operation against its allied forces in eastern Ukraine in order to build a pretext to invade the former Soviet republic.
Sources from the Joe Biden Administration have transferred this accusation to the media on the same day that the Kiev Government denounced a large-scale cyberattack against its systems in a sign that the conflict continues to worsen.
“Russia has placed a group of operatives in order to carry out a mock operation in eastern Ukraine. These operatives are trained in urban guerrilla warfare and the use of explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against their own Russian agents,” said a US government official. The objective was, according to this source, "to create a pretext for the invasion."
The news puts the finishing touch to a week of negotiations between Russia, the United States and the European allies in NATO that have yielded neither results nor signs of progress. A defiant Kremlin already warned on Monday, at the bilateral meeting with Washington held in Geneva, that Western governments would commit "a big mistake to the detriment of European security" - in the words of the head of the Russian delegation, Sergey Riabkov - if they do not agree. to their wishes, which essentially consist of reducing NATO's presence in Eastern Europe.
This Friday the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, stressed that Moscow has "run out of patience" and is seeking written guarantees that NATO will not expand towards Russian borders.
"The West has been driven by arrogance and has exacerbated tensions in violation of its obligations and common sense," Lavrov insisted,
reports Maria Sahuquillo from Moscow
.
Although it gives a touch of whitewash, the tone of Russia is increasingly elevated.
On Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov refused to rule out a military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela if tensions with the United States escalate.
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