RUssland’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has appeared in shorts on the Indonesian island of Bali after media reports of an alleged hospital stay. His spokeswoman Maria Zakharova published a video in Nusa Dua on Monday showing the minister reading on a terrace with palm trees and the sea in the background.
The video received a lot of ridicule and malice on Twitter. For example, the public satirical program “extra 3” posted an image from the video that shows Lavrov sitting with an “Apple Watch” and an “iPhone”. “Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov was not hospitalized after his arrival in Bali. Instead, he went shopping to stock up on Western consumer goods,” the post reads.
Numerous users also reacted to the Foreign Minister’s T-shirt. The blue garment bears the inscription “Basquiat”, a reminiscence of the American painter and draftsman Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988. This was considered queer.
Lavrov traveled to the Indonesian meeting in place of Russian President Vladimir Putin, after Putin canceled his attendance less than a week before the summit was due to begin. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) criticized Putin’s absence. “It would have been good if President Putin had gone to the G-20 summit,” Scholz said on Sunday in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. There he would have had to face the questions and criticism of the other participants, said Scholz. “That’s probably why he’s not here.” Putin’s absence will not prevent other countries from criticizing Russia’s war of aggression and calling on Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine and create the conditions for fair talks about peace could, says the chancellor.
In the video circulated by his ministry, Lavrov says “we will adopt the final statement tomorrow.” At the same time, he explained that negotiations on the final document of the G20 summit were ongoing. The Indian Foreign Minister had just called him about further coordination. Russia is likely to look primarily at the wording of its war against Ukraine. In the G20, for example, China is Russia’s ally.
Lavrov had previously said on the sidelines of the summit of the Southeast Asian community of states ASEAN in Cambodia that a joint final declaration there had failed due to the dispute over the wording of the situation in Ukraine. The US and Western colleagues had insisted on “absolutely unacceptable language regarding the situation in and around Ukraine,” he said.
After the Asean meeting, he traveled on to Bali, where he was greeted by dancing women and soldiers at the airport on Sunday. Media reports circulated on Monday that the minister had been taken to the hospital. “We are here with Sergey Viktorovich in Indonesia and read the ticker and can not believe our eyes,” said ministry spokeswoman Zakharova in Nusa Dua on the island of Bali. This is now the highest form of fakes, she said. A little later she published the video showing Lavrov sitting at a small table. Lavrov apparently wanted to refute the reports about his alleged stay in the clinic.
“Our President has been written about for ten years as being ill. This is such a game that is not new in politics,” said Lavrov. The media, citing Western secret services or informants, had reported on various serious illnesses of Putin without any evidence. Lavrov called on the Western media in particular to report “more honestly” and “more often the truth” and not one-sidedly. In contrast, the US and the EU repeatedly accuse Lavrov and the Russian media of targeted lies, propaganda and disinformation.
