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Statement by Trend News Agency over developments around Russian Foreign Ministry [VIDEO]

4 June 2018 17:36 (UTC+04:00)
Statement by Trend News Agency over developments around Russian Foreign Ministry [VIDEO]

By Trend

On June 1, Artem Sokolov, the journalist of Trend News Agency, at a briefing in the Russian Foreign Ministry asked Deputy Director of the ministry’s Information and Press Department Artem Kozhin the following question:

“In one of his recent interviews, the Armenian prime minister [Nikol Pashinyan] stated that negotiations on the settlement of the [Armenia-Azerbaijan] Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are impossible without participation of the illegal regime created in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. A question arises in this regard: in your opinion, how much such statements complicate the settlement process and prevent the parties from finding a common ground?”

The answer of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official is as follows:

“In general, loud statements that do not fit onto the appropriate rails, in particular laid by the OSCE, are probably not constructive. I would say so.”

The answer of the Russian diplomat is given without any changes. The corresponding article together with the video footage of the briefing was posted on the Trend’s website at 15:16 (GMT +4). The article, just like the video footage, is still available on our website.

However, an hour later, the transcript of the briefing was posted on the official website of the Russian Foreign Ministry, with the words “in general” in Kozhin’s answer replaced with “your” for some inexplicable reason, and, as a result, the essence of the Russian diplomat’s statement was completely distorted.

Such a manipulation paved the way for various insinuations against Trend in both the Russian and Armenian media outlets, aimed at slandering the activity of the Azerbaijani news agency.

We wonder how such a serious and respected state authority as the Russian Foreign Ministry, which sets the foreign policy course of the biggest country in the world and should, apparently, serve as an example for many colleagues, can make such distortions and be engaged in garbling that entails extremely unpleasant consequences.

Considering the situation that emerged, we ask the Azerbaijani journalistic community, and in particular the Press Council of Azerbaijan, to protect the Trend News Agency from unjustified attacks and speculations.

Footage from the press conference (in Russian)

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