The Pentagon has categorically denied accusations by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that a private US military company is importing chemicals into eastern Ukraine to provoke it, according to the US edition of Politico.
Shoigu's comments came during a meeting in Moscow on Tuesday with the country's top military officials and President Vladimir Putin, who made new threats against NATO if the Alliance continued with unspecified "aggressive steps."
The allegation that US contractors were smuggling "tanks with unidentified chemical components" into Ukraine's Donetsk region was met with a quick response from the Pentagon, where spokesman John Kirby said "these statements by Minister Shoigu are completely untrue."
"What the United States is doing in Ukraine is on our doorstep," Putin said, "and they need to understand that we have nowhere else to go. Do they think that we will just watch indifferently? If the aggressive line of our Western colleagues continues, we will take adequate military-technical measures to react and will react sharply to unfriendly steps. "
Putin's threatening remarks are based on comments by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov this month that Moscow could consider deploying medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. The minister cited vague indications that the United States was considering doing the same after the Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Missile Treaty.
The treaty bans missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,000 km.
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