Maria Zakharova, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson: "Ukraine. At our previous briefing, we talked about the preparations by the Armed Forces of Ukraine for potential military action in Donbass. Unfortunately, we continue to see alarming reports from that region. According to the available information, Kiev is plotting an armed provocation on the line of contact taking advantage of the imposed martial law, including in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to stage a surge attack in the direction of Mariupol in order to seize the Donetsk-controlled areas along the Sea of Azov and reach the border with Russia.
The attack is to be conducted by a massed contingent of troops that the AFU has been reinforcing over the past few months as repeatedly reported by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. From the 1st to the 7th of December alone OSCE monitors discovered 190 units of heavy weaponry prohibited by the Minsk Agreements outside of the designated storage facilities.
As Kiev strategists believe Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko desperately needs a new, sharp aggravation of the situation in yet another attempt to stop his steadily falling approval rating from declining even further shortly before the elections. A sharp escalation in the tensions in Donbass will give Poroshenko an excuse to extend martial law and even cancel the presidential election".
