The Sky News employee had crashed the Russian foreign minister’s event at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro
A Sky News journalist had snuck uninvited into Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s press conference at the G20 summit in Brazil. Once discovered, she was allowed to stay by a unanimous vote of the accredited reporters present.
Moscow’s top diplomat usually has the Russian press pool attend the conferences, along with reporters from host countries. Western journalists stopped getting invitations after their governments banned, sanctioned and denied accreditation to RT and other Russian outlets, however.
Speaking to Russian media on Wednesday about the incident Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova revealed that the unnamed “spy” was handled with professional courtesy.
“Colleagues, please vote. A Sky News journalist wants to take part in our press conference. We all know how Russian journalists are treated in the West. It’s up to you to decide whether to let her into Sergei Viktorovich’s press conference or not,” Zakharova told reporters. “There was absolute silence in the hall for a few seconds. And then everyone raised their hands – unanimous in favor of the lady staying. She blushed noticeably.”
“When you suddenly see real democracy, you blush,” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan commented on her Telegram channel.
The British stowaway had taken a seat in the back row, holding a microphone with the BRICS logo, according to a reporter for the Russian outlet KP. Once she was identified as an outsider, the woman approached Zakharova and introduced herself properly. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman then called for the vote, speaking English so the “guest” would understand as well.
While the Sky News employee did not ask a question during the event, she rushed towards Lavrov at the end, with a question about the Ukrainian strike on Russia using the US-supplied ATACMS missiles, according to KP.
The Russian diplomat had answered that very question earlier in the hour-long press conference, and apparently did not feel like repeating it for Sky News. His security politely but firmly blocked the Sky News journalist as Lavrov left the building, according to journalists who were present.
The EU and Canada banned RT and most other Russian outlets in March 2022, citing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The US government eventually got around its constitutional ban on censorship by accusing RT of acting on behalf of “Russian intelligence” in September.
