Kremlin: Putin did not threaten Poroshenko

The news from the Ukrainian media, according to which Russian President Putin supposedly threatened his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko to take the offensive in Ukraine during a telephone conversation on November 26, was a hoax, the Kremlin said. 

"Indeed, upon the initiative from the Ukrainian party, a telephone conversation between Putin and Poroshenko took place yesterday evening," Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow. According to him, the presidents discussed "bilateral relations and the situation in the south-east of Ukraine." "Various messages from several media outlets, especially Ukrainian ones, about the content of the conversation, were fictitious and untrue," he added, TASS reports. 

The news that said that Putin threatened Poroshenko to take the offensive in Ukraine, should it continue its way towards EU and NATO membership and refuse to recognize the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, was reported by Ukrainian publication The Insider. The publication referred to a source at the presidential administration of the country.

According to the publication, in the evening of November 26, Poroshenko conducted a 90-minute phone conversation with Putin, after which he appeared depressed at a meeting of the parliamentary faction the Block of Petro Poroshenko.

Earlier that day, Putin announced the need to protect the sovereignty and integrity of Russia, as well as to ensure "security of our allies." At the same time, Putin stressed out that Russia did not have an intention to engage in any geopolitical conflicts.