White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre feigned ignorance yesterday about the May 30 Moscow drone attack—the U.S. is “gathering information about what happened,” she said—but took the opportunity to denounce Russia’s special military operation as “an unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine. She insisted that the U.S. does not support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia but the drone strikes followed the “17th round of airstrikes on Kiev just this month alone” which, she claimed, are devastating civilian areas.
“So, Russia started this unprovoked aggression, this unprovoked war against Ukraine. Russia can end this at any time,” she said. “They can withdraw their forces from Ukraine and instead of launching these brutal airstrikes against Ukraine, in their cities and on people every day.”
In response, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov, in a statement posted on the embassy’s Telegram channel, charged that U.S. statements amount to incitement. “In fact, they sound like an encouragement for Ukrainian terrorists,” he said. “Just consider the U.S. officials’ attempts to hide behind the phrase that they are gathering information about what happened! And then they immediately switch to a media attack against our country. So really, doesn’t the administration understand that no one believes their slogans about non-support of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory?! Especially, when these words are pronounced somehow bashfully and hesitantly. The United States is consciously and irretrievably descending into the abyss of hostilities in Europe. By the way, to generate confrontation between NATO and Russia is an old cherished dream of Nazi radicals in Kiev.
