Lavrov: US Claims of Russia Arming Taliban Smokescreen to Divert Focus from Syria

MOSCOW-Washington’s recent accusations that Moscow supplies the Taliban with weapons are unprofessional and baseless, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that the US has not provided any evidence.

Lavrov was speaking at a press conference following talks with OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier in Moscow.

According to Itar Tass, the Russian foreign minister said that Washington’s claims are a possible smokescreen aimed at diverting attention from changing course on Syria and returning to ‘regime-change’ rhetoric.

 “As for the statements on [Russia] allegedly supplying the Taliban with weapons, which are heard from the military in Washington and from those who head the US military group in the region, including Afghanistan – those [statements] are unprofessional and groundless,” Lavrov said. The minister added that those in Washington in charge of gathering intelligence “know perfectly well that those statements are untrue,” and “not a single fact” was provided.

 “We feel the attempts by some of our colleagues to scrap the UN Security Council resolution on a political solution through inter-Syrian dialogue and go to the old rhetoric of regime change,” Lavrov stated, adding that Russia will oppose it.

Zakharova suggests UN should develop strategy to fight fake news

 Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has urged the UN Secretariat to develop an international strategy of fight against fake news and disinformation that she compared to a virus epidemic in the scope of damage.

“Mass production” of fake news has resulted from a slump in professional standards in media against the background of unfounded restrictions by law, she said at the 39th session of the UN General Assembly’s Committee on Information.

The spokeswoman warned about an “unprecedented in the depth of problems and amount of risks” crisis, which she believes was triggered “by global political turbulence and return by some states of the globe to the practice of information confrontation under the Cold War pattern”.

“The practice of unfounded legislative and functional restrictions on media activity keeps spreading. Against this background, media resources are facing a crisis of trust from the readers, triggered first of all by a slump in professional standards, which are manifested not in the least in the mass production of the so-called fake news,” Zakharova said.

H.M