PARIS, France: French public television came under severe criticism on Friday for airing a prime-time interview with Russia\u2019s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.<\/p>\n
The France 2 television channel aired 10 minutes of the pre-recorded interview during its Thursday evening news, while the full hour-long version was posted online.<\/p>\n
More than four years into Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov on France 2 claimed Moscow was intent on defending \u201cinternational law.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the US-Israeli strikes on Iran that sparked the Middle East war had breached these rules.<\/p>\n
But he rejected any notion of Russia breaking international law in Ukraine, claiming its forces never targeted \u201cexclusively civilian\u201d targets.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s ambassador to France, Vadym Omelchenko, said on X that people must be wondering why French television had given a platform to \u201ca war criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Researcher Etienne Marcuz described the conversation with Lavrov as a \u201cdisgraceful interview during which a minister from an opposing power\u201d had been allowed to reel off his talking points.<\/p>\n
Russia specialist Dimitri Minic described the interview as \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn case France TV teams still underestimate information warfare, they should understand that Moscow has made it the central weapon of its war against the West,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n
France TV did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said he regretted that Lavrov had been \u201cable to calmly roll out his propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, Russia is not defending international law \u2014 not in Iran, nor in Ukraine, nor anywhere else,\u201d he responded on the sidelines of a G7 meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, Russia does not spare civilians,\u201d he added, mentioning among other examples the 2022 killing of non-combatants in Ukraine\u2019s Bucha and the flattening that year of the besieged city of Mariupol.<\/p>\n
During the interview, presenter Lea Salame had responded that France 2 reporters had documented civilian deaths in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
US-led Ukraine peace talks to end Europe\u2019s worst conflict since World War II have been derailed by the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS, France: French public television came under severe criticism on Friday for airing a prime-time interview with Russia\u2019s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The France 2 television channel aired 10 minutes of the pre-recorded interview during its Thursday evening news, while the full hour-long version was posted online. More than four years into Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95526,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95513\/revisions\/95526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}