Both TASS and Sputnik carried responses from Russian officials to the reports in Western press about supposed plans of Russia to invade Ukraine.
The Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs Leonid Slutsky wrote on his Telegram channel today that the Western media are publishing “fairy tales about Russia’s plans to attack Ukraine.” He attacked the German tabloid Bild by name, saying “this cheap fake news item is being seriously presented by a seemingly reputable newspaper that decided to follow suit of U.S. media outlets.”
He concluded his comments with, “It seems that somebody really doesn’t want for the truth to be heard about the actions of the regime in Kiev on undermining the Minsk Accords and the true mediating role of Russia in the settlement in southeastern Ukraine,”
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry also scored Bild,according to Sputnik, “noting that its ‘map of planned invasion’ was assembled from disconnected pieces,” according to Russian reporting. “She pointed out that the Ukrainian city of Lvov is called ‘Lemberg’ (as opposed to the official German name ‘Lwiw'). The spokeswoman recalled that the city was called this in 1942 by the occupying Nazi forces—and wondered what map Bild had based its ‘invasion plan’ on.”
