RT India has removed a social media post that claimed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was “waiting to meet” Russian President Vladimir Putin, admitting that the claim “may have been a misrepresentation of events”.
In a clarification issued late Friday night, the broadcaster said: “We deleted an earlier post about Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif waiting to meet Vladimir Putin at the Peace and Trust Forum in Turkmenistan. The post may have misrepresented the events.”
According to Indian media reports, the original RT India post had claimed that Prime Minister Shehbaz waited for President Putin for 40 minutes before the Russian leader’s meeting with President Erdogan “turned tiresome and gate-crashing”. “He left ten minutes later,” The Times of India and Hindustan Times quoted the original post as saying.
Meanwhile, Russian news agency RIA reported that Prime Minister Shehbaz later joined the talks between Presidents Erdogan and Putin, which had continued for 40 minutes behind closed doors.
Information Minister Ataullah Tarar shared late on Friday from a series of videos showing the premier’s engagements, saying: “Great interaction with world leaders. Pakistan shines on the global stage”.
The footage showed Prime Minister Shehbaz shaking hands with President Putin in what appeared to be a one-off. Tarar described the agreements with Putin, Erdogan and Pezeshkian as “warm and cordial exchanges”.
Similarly, the prime minister’s foreign media spokesperson Mosharraf Zaidi also shared the same video and said the prime minister had “productive meetings with his peers from all the countries” attending the forum.
“The usual warmth of relations was largely in evidence as the Prime Minister shared the day with President Erdogan, President Putin and a number of other key world leaders,” he said. The Russian Embassy in Pakistan also reposted the video.
It is pertinent to note that RT India is the newest offshoot of Russia’s state-funded global media network. President Putin formally launched the RT India news channel last week during a visit to New Delhi.
