MOSCOW. June 16 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he did not possess absolute confirmation of reports on the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State (a terrorist organization banned in Russia).
"Naturally, I've heard these reports. I don't yet have hundred-percent confirmation of this information concerning Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's elimination," Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow on Friday.
Reports on the killing of leaders of terrorist groups "have always been presented with great fanfare, and yet the record shows that these groups have recovered their capability, and these groups represented by ISIL, Al Qaeda and its numerous incarnations, including Jabhat al-Nusra (terrorist organizations outlawed in Russia), are still continuing their activities," he said.
"Jabhat al-Nusra is still a big mystery, because, despite all legal requirements [...], while we can see a fight against ISIL in practice, we virtually don't see a fight against Jabhat al-Nusra and groups that have mixed with it," he said.
"In this sense, the coalition led by the U.S. is behaving exactly the way the coalition behaved during the time of President Obama's administration," he said.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported earlier on Friday, citing tentative findings, that al-Baghdadi had been killed by a Russian airstrike in Syria.