Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in an appearance on the Soloviev Live program this morning, argued that people in the West are beginning to realize that the Ukraine crisis was actually precipitated by actions of Washington, not by Russia. “It turns out that, fundamentally, the situation around Ukraine was provoked by the United States, but it’s not us who are beginning to realize it,” she said, reported TASS. “We understood it long ago and have been trying to tell everyone about it for years. However, experts, political scientists and journalists in the West are beginning to realize it, timidly or even persistently saying that it all seems to have begun with provocative actions. And the provocative actions were clearly conducted by Washington.” Zakharova indicated that this was the context in which to understand the recent revelations by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and former French President Francois Hollande, that the Normandy format and the Minsk process were not real diplomacy but exercises in deceit by the West to allow the Kiev regime to build up its military strength in order to “solve” the Russian “problem” in southeast Ukraine by force.