On its YouTube channel, the Russian Foreign Ministry deliberately distorted parts of an interview with Prime Minister Sergei Lavrov, which he conducted for French public television. Pay attention to this Convert it French journalists themselves.
A ten-minute excerpt of the interview with French journalist Lea Salama was first shown on the France 2 evening news channel on March 26 and was viewed by 3.4 million people. The next day, the whole conversation took place, which lasted about an hour to publish connected.
The ten-minute segment that was broadcast on television was mainly about the war in the Middle East. Lavrov said that Russia is defending, first and foremost, not Iran, but rather international law, which the United States is violating.
He rejected allegations that Moscow was providing Tehran with intelligence information about attacks on American targets, saying that “everyone knows” the coordinates of American military bases in the region. Lavrov also rejected allegations that Russia itself is violating international law in Ukraine, and said the Russian military has never struck “exclusively civilian” targets.
After the interview was published, French television was publicly criticized. Most of them are experts criticize Not the fact that Lavrov appeared, but the weak journalistic work in their view. Salama did not provide adequate context or challenge the Russian minister’s most egregious and false statements — thus, critics said, allowing him to spread Russian narratives about the war against Ukraine. interview Comment Among them was French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot: He expressed his regret that Lavrov “was able to present his propaganda quietly.”
French TV editors had to explain their position in a separate article on their website. Head of News, Philippe Courbet maleRussia is an important ally of Iran, and in the context of the war in the Middle East, Lavrov’s interview has obvious journalistic value. Courbet separately stressed that Lavrov did not request that questions be presented to him in advance and did not set conditions on the topics, but only demanded that the entire interview be made available to the public.
As published by the Russian Foreign Ministry interview On your YouTube channel. On April 1, French television indicated that in some places the translation of Salama’s words had been deliberately falsified “to support the propaganda narrative.” The following are the distortions pointed out by journalists:
- At the beginning of the interview, Salama says she has not heard much about Russia’s defense of Iran, its ally. In the Russian translation on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s YouTube channel, the phrase was changed to the opposite meaning: “You have greatly defended your ally Iran.”
- While discussing the Russian-Ukrainian war, Salama mentioned “tens of thousands of dead Ukrainian civilians.” In the Russian Foreign Ministry’s version, “tens of thousands” has been replaced by “hundreds,” and the same question has been rephrased in translation with the aim, as French TV writes, “of minimizing references to possible war crimes.”
- In another clip, he attributed to Salameh words that she did not utter. After asking about the Russian threat to France and Lavrov’s answer, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s translation included the journalist’s phrase, “I understand you,” implicitly indicating her agreement with the interlocutor’s point of view.
The video was watched on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs channel by more than 370,000 people. The administration did not comment on the forged translation.
Cover photo: Pavel Bednyakov/TASS/Profimedia