The external affairs ministry’s fact check unit on Tuesday debunked a viral social media post falsely attributed to EAM S Jaishankar, which claimed that he had expressed disappointment over the Russian minister’s “sarcastic” response to his appeal for peace between Russia and Ukraine.
The purported video shows a fabricated clip of Jaishankar and a statement suggesting that he had appealed to both countries to understand that war brings only economic hardship and destruction. “We called on both Russia and Ukraine to understand that war serves no one and only brings economic hardship and destruction. I am deeply disappointed by the Russian minister’s sarcastic and disrespectful reaction to my sincere appeal for peace,” read the caption of the misleading post.
The fabricated clip appears to be from when the external affairs minister attended the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, US on October 30-31. Because they have their own peace mediation initiative,” he said, we have also been coordinating this with the Americans.
In the original clip, Jaishankar said that India had discussed three aspects of the Ukraine conflict with Russia, Kyiv and European countries. He added that the discussions covered protecting civilian shipping and seafarers from attacks, restoring grain exports from Russia and Ukraine, and the third aspect was related to energy, which he said was the “most complicated”. “I had gone earlier to Moscow, and even today I discussed it with Mr Lavrov (Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov), and then in between I had gone to Kyiv, and we are in touch with the Ukrainian side.
