Russia's foreign ministry said on Monday that media reports Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had been taken to hospital were ‘fake’. Picture: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
"This, of course, is the height of fakery," Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Russia's foreign ministry was reacting on Monday to media reports that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had been taken to hospital.
Lavrov said on Monday that he was preparing for the G20 summit and was in his hotel, the Russian state-owned TASS news agency reported.
Associated Press, citing Indonesian officials, said that Lavrov had been taken to hospital after arriving on the island of Bali for a Group of 20 summit. AP said Lavrov, 72, had been treated for a heart condition.
But Zakharova rubbished the report.
She posted a video of Lavrov, President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister since 2004, sitting outdoors on a patio, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, reading documents.
Asked about the report, Lavrov said Western journalists had been writing falsely for a decade that Putin, 70, was ill.
"Well, they have been writing for about ten years that our president is ill," Lavrov, told the camera. "This is a kind of game that is not new in politics."
Reuters
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