Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Monday denied Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had been taken to the hospital after suffering a health problem upon his arrival in Bali for the G20 summit.
“Sergey and I are reading the [reports] in Indonesia and can’t believe our eyes: it turns out he has been hospitalized,” Zakharova claimed in a post on Telegram, adding a laughing cat emoji. “This, of course, is a top-flight fake,” she added. Zakharova also published a video on her Telegram account, purporting to show Lavrov at his hotel in Bali.
The posts by Zakharova, a bellicose mouthpiece for the Kremlin and Lavrov, came in response to a report by the Associated Press, sourced to multiple Indonesian government and health officials, that Lavrov was being treated in hospital for a heart condition after arriving in Bali. Bali’s Governor Wayan Koster later said Lavrov had been taken to hospital for a “check-up” and was “immediately” released, according to Sky News.
In the video she posted on Telegram, a laughing Zakharova is heard saying: “Everyone is writing you’ve been hospitalized.”
Lavrov responds: “Well, they’ve been writing about our president for about 10 years, that he’s ill,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “This isn’t a new game in politics.”
Numerous rumors have circulated over the years about Putin’s reported ill health.