Sergei Lavrov
The Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov called unacceptable the incident of insulting the journalist RT at a briefing the official representative of US state Department, John Kirby. As reported on Friday, November 18, RIA Novosti, he said following a meeting with Secretary of state John Kerry on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru.
“I believe that this does not reflect American values, and I hope this does not reflect the position of the Secretary of state”, — said the Minister. Lavrov noted that Kirby “has to understand his own chiefs, who will be responsible for what he does and how does its work”.
The head of the Russian foreign Ministry said that he had not discussed the incident at a meeting with Kerry.
Earlier official representative of Russian foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova called the behavior Kirby egregious case of division of journalists on “right and wrong”. She recalled that in Russia there are employees of American media, and asked if they would like to experience the same attitude.
Wednesday, November 16, RT correspondent Gayana, Chichakyan asked the official U.S. state Department spokesman John Kirby about how Washington has data on the impacts of Air and space forces of Russia in five hospitals in Syria (information relating to possible actions videoconferencing or the Syrian air force, was voiced a day earlier by state Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau).
The state Department spokesman noted that the information contained in the report “humanitarian organizations, and credible”. However, he did not name specific sources, but also did not say where exactly the mentioned hospitals are located, and advised to address for comments in the defense Ministry. When one of those present at the briefing correspondents noted that Kirby is behaving inappropriately, the diplomat said: “I’m not going to put RT on a par with other journalists who represent independent media.”
After the press conference, one of the employees of the state Department apologized to the Chichakyan for ambiguous statements colleagues and promised to send a correspondent to the hospitals, which, it is believed in Washington, was attacked. RT later reported that American diplomats still provided information on medical institutions that supposedly bombed Russia. As it turned out, it was about three hospitals in El-Ataribe (province of Aleppo) in Northern Syria, two in the city of Idlib in the North-West of the country and one mobile hospital in the same area.
15 November, the defense Ministry has called “ordinary lies” the accusations against Russia in attacks on civilians in Syria.