French public television came under severe criticism on Friday for airing a prime-time interview with Russia’s 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.
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More than four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov on France 2 claimed Moscow was intent on defending “international law.”
He said US-Israeli strikes on Iran that sparked the Middle East war had breached these rules.
But he rejected any notion of Russia breaking international law in Ukraine, claiming its forces never targeted “exclusively civilian” targets.
Ukraine’s ambassador to France, Vadym Omelchenko, said on X that people must be wondering why French television had given a platform to “a war criminal.”
Russia specialist Dimitri Minic described the interview as “catastrophic.”
“In 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,” he wrote on X.
Researcher Etienne Marcuz described it as a “disgraceful interview during which a minister from an opposing power can calmly reel off his talking points at prime time on France’s main public channel, and almost without any pushback” from the television presenter.
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