the spokesperson for Russian diplomacy called in the middle of a press conference not to comment on the firing of a ballistic missile

Maria Zakharova took a call in the middle of a briefing on Thursday while her microphone was on. The whole room heard and the excerpt is playing in a loop on social networks.

The scene is surreal. Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, interrupted herself in the middle of a press conference on Thursday, November 21, to take a phone call. Except that the microphone was on and the whole room heard the conversation. His male interlocutor, whose identity was not specified, expressly asked him not to comment on the firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile in the Dnipropetrovsk region, of which kyiv accused Moscow in the morning.

“Allo Macha [diminutif de Maria] ? We are not commenting on the ballistic missile attack, which Western media have started reporting on.”can we hear in this sequence, widely transcribed by the Russian-speaking media. The latter evoke the site of Yuzhmash, a Ukrainian missile factory. The spokesperson then hangs up, without commenting on this interruption, and continues as if nothing had happened, to take a question from a journalist by videoconference.

It is impossible to know if it is really a mistake, comments the independent media Agent, or if this false blunder is staged. The passage was removed from the rebroadcast on the Russian Foreign Ministry's YouTube channel, but not from its rebroadcast on Rutube, via the Russia Today channel. Maria Zakharova, quoted by the Russian agency Tass, then clarified that she had requested “to the experts” if one of the current files was part of its prerogatives. “The answer came during the briefing: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes no comment.”