MOSCOW, Feb 19 — The Kremlin today cast the United States was a "major provocateur” of international tensions for condoning attacks on Crimea, warning that the remarks about the peninsula underscored the depth of disagreement between the two countries.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to comments by US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland who said the United States considers that Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, should be demilitarised and that Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the peninsula.

"Nuland belongs to a very broad camp of the most aggressive ‘hawks’ in American politics. This is a point of view we know well,” Peskov said in comments published by the TASS news agency. — Reuters