Bizarre video before G20 appearance
Lavrov chills in Bali in shorts and an Apple Watch
11/14/2022, 6:21 p.m
To refute reports that he is in hospital with heart problems, Russia’s foreign minister posted a video showing him scantily clad on a hotel terrace ahead of the G20 summit. But his Apple devices cause a new uproar.
According to reports about a hospital stay on the holiday island of Bali, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has shown himself to be in good health – and in shorts. The 72-year-old published a video showing him reading on a terrace with palm trees and the sea in the background. Lavrov is taking part in the G20 summit of leading industrialized and emerging countries on the Indonesian holiday island as Vladimir Putin’s representative. The Kremlin chief had canceled his participation in the meeting of heads of state and government as a result of the Ukraine war.
In the video, which his own ministry published, Lavrov wore a blue T-shirt with a crown and the words Basquiat – a memory of the US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988. Lavrov said he was preparing for his appearances at the summit tomorrow, Tuesday. Reports had previously circulated in Bali that the Russian – one of the world’s longest-serving foreign ministers – had to go to the hospital as soon as he arrived the night before. “We are here in Indonesia with Sergey Viktorovich and read the ticker and can’t believe our eyes,” said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in Nusa Dua the day after. That is now the highest form of false news. A little later she published the video. In it Lavrov also said: “For ten years it has been written about our president that he was ill. This is a game that is not new in politics.”
Apple Watch on the arm and iPhone on the table
Lavrov’s spokeswoman also responded to a discussion on social networks about the minister’s Western technology visible in the video. First she angrily rejected the fact that the minister was wearing a watch from the US company Apple. When a Russian commentator then asked whether the minister’s iPhone posed a risk due to possible access by secret services, Zakharova thanked him for being concerned about security. “But I also see it that we should have developed our phones and computers ourselves,” said Zakharova. Russian politicians are often criticized for railing against the West while enjoying its technological advances.
“We will accept the final declaration tomorrow,” the casually dressed Lavrov said in the video. At the same time, he stated that negotiations on the final document were ongoing. Russia is likely to look primarily at the wording of its war in Ukraine. Lavrov had previously said on the sidelines of a 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. He then traveled on to Bali. Like other guests, he was received at the airport by local dancers and soldiers. Then he reportedly had to go to the hospital.