Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 15/11/2021
The statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, regarding the resolution of the migrant crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland and Lithuania, was used by the website “Alo” to publish a text with a sensational headline featuring incorrect information.
The text was published with the following title:
“Lavrov could hardly wait to throw everything in their faces: What’s up Europe? Don’t be hypocrites, accept migrants now, you and NATO have destroyed their countries”
From the text’s title, it could be concluded that Lavrov uttered words in a public speech that are not typical of diplomatic representatives, but when you read the text carefully, the message from the title about “hypocrisy of European countries and NATO” cannot be found.
The text of the website “Alo” states the following:
“Polish police released a video today showing a group of migrants camping from the Belarusian side of the Polish border during the night. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on the European Union (EU) countries to avoid double standards in resolving the migrant crisis in Belarus on the border with Poland and Lithuania.
“In this situation, it is necessary to avoid double standards and use the usual approach regarding the position of the people of the EU”, Lavrov said at a press conference today, reports Tass. The Russian minister also emphasized that this crisis stems from the policy that NATO and EU countries have pursued in the Middle East and North Africa for years. Polish police released a video today showing a group of migrants camping on the Belarusian side of the Polish border during the night. This situation followed after several days of heightened tensions at the border, where a large group of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, tried to break into Poland. Migrants are mainly from Iraq and Syria, although some came from Africa, taking the opportunity to enter Europe via a new migrant route. Most try to just pass through Poland to reach Germany or other Western European countries.
“Poland has received strong signals of support and solidarity from EU member states and the United States as it faces its border crisis”, Alo writes.
This website published Lavrov’s statement referring to the Russian news agency Tass.
The non-diplomatic vocabulary of the Russian minister, to which “Alo” refers in the title, cannot be found in the publication of the Russian media.
According to Tass, the Russian diplomat called for avoiding double standards and solving this problem through a common approach. He pointed out, among other things, that it is inadmissible to use different standards in Poland and Italy when Brussels considers how Warsaw and Rome behave with the influx of migrants, and that the EU should provide money to Belarus for migrants in the same way it helped Turkey.
The words that Alo claims that Lavrov uttered cannot be heard on the press conference recording either.
Since it is not true that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia said what the website “Alo” put in the text’s title, we rate this publication as clickbait. This rating is given to a media report whose title has no basis in the text that follows. Such texts and articles aim to attract the consumer’s attention with a sensationalist title, promising content that does not exist and is mainly created out of financial interest, i.e., to increase readability.
Author: Darvin Muric