MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brushed off the threat of sanctions on Tuesday, saying the West would impose them regardless of events and describing the response to Russia's recognition of two breakaway Ukrainian regions as predictable.

       "Our European, American, British colleagues will not stop and will not calm down until they have exhausted all their possibilities for the so-called ‘punishment of Russia’. They are already threatening us with all manner of sanctions or, as they say now, 'the mother of all sanctions'," Lavrov said.

       "Well, we're used to it. We know that sanctions will be imposed anyway, in any case. With or without reason."

       (Reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Mark Trevelyan)