WASHINGTON — The State Department is turning up the rhetorical heat on Russian President Vladimir Putin for statements about the situation in Ukraine that the U.S. says are lies.

Calling Putin’s comments the most “startling Russian fiction” since writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote “The formula ‘two plus two equals five’ is not without its attractions,” the department identified 10 “False Claims about Ukraine.”

Among them were assertions about a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, the legality of Russian military intervention there and the legitimacy of Ukraine’s fugitive president.