Russian Embassy fights back after Bloomberg “caught blatantly lying” about Russian healthcare

If you’re going to tell blatant lies about Russia, you better make sure they don’t catch you. On Tuesday, US news site Bloomberg was caught bungling statistics to make Russia look bad – and they weren’t happy about it.

An op-ed written by regular columnist Clara Ferreira Marques titled ‘How Putin’s Russia Bungled the Pandemic’ described how, as of 2013, Russia had 3.8 beds per 1,000 people, way behind the OECD average of 8.2 per 1,000. The truth was the exact opposite – Bloomberg had swapped the numbers.

On their Facebook page, The Embassy of Russia in the US hit back hard.

“Another major American media outlet has been caught blatantly lying about the measures taken by the Russian authorities to combat the spread of coronavirus infection,” the embassy wrote.

The Facebook post provided links to the official World Bank data, showing that Russia had over double the number of beds per capita compared to the OECD. The embassy called this swapping of figures “sheer forgery.”

“Lies about our country is unable to #StopCovid19. Such tricks of pseudo-experts specializing on #Russia, which shape public opinion in the West about our country, have long become a sad reality. We are convinced that readers and viewers of the leading American media deserve verified, but not deliberately distorted, information,” the post continued.

Bloomberg has since amended their piece, changing the graph to show the true figures for both Russia and the OECD.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!