Rome, 13 Nov. (LaPresse) – Corriere della Sera reportedly refused to publish an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. This was reported in a statement from the Moscow ministry published by Russian news agencies. According to the statement, the Foreign Ministry offered the newspaper an exclusive interview with Lavrov after ‘noticing a growing flow of fake news about Russia’ in the Italian media. The editorial staff accepted ‘with enthusiasm’. "They sent us a series of in-depth questions for the interview. The minister gave a comprehensive answer to each of them. The text was prepared quickly and was ready for publication. However, the newspaper then refused to publish the answers,‘ wrote the Russian Foreign Ministry, referring to a ’blatant case of censorship". According to Russian diplomats, Corriere della Sera explained that Lavrov's words ‘contain many controversial statements that require fact-checking or further clarification, the publication of which would have exceeded a reasonable length’. For Moscow, ‘this case is a clear example of how Italian citizens are not being provided with objective information on the situation around Ukraine, knowingly misleading them’. The Russian Foreign Ministry then published two versions of the interview on its website, the full version and the one edited by Corriere della Sera, where, according to the ministry itself, “all passages inconvenient for the official authorities in Rome were deliberately removed”.