Rough start to the week for Sergei Lavrov. Expected in Serbia for two days, the head of Russian diplomacy had to cancel his visit on Monday, June 6, due to sanctions prohibiting him from flying over European space. “ Inconceivable “, he commented coldly, denouncing in his hoarse voice a measure “ scandalous » and the « russophobia ” of the “ Brussels puppeteers ».
Expected this Wednesday, June 8 in Turkey for negotiations aimed at authorizing the export from Ukraine of immense reserves of cereals, the irremovable Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs inherited at 72 years, including eighteen in office, the mission impossible to justify and facilitate an aggression which has aroused the almost unanimous disapproval of the international community.
To him, therefore, the false starts and the moments of loneliness, reflections of the isolation of his country. On March 1, the majority of the delegations present at the UN headquarters in Geneva preferred to leave the room rather than listen to his speech by video.
High-flying
You’d think he’s used to it. Already in 2015, he tried to justify the Russian annexation of Crimea under the laughing stock at the Munich Conference on International Security. “ All his arguments appeared as ridiculous and capillotracted pretextsRussian investigative journalist Mikhail Zygar comments in his book The Kremlin Men. The humiliating laughter was a new phase in the development of relations between Russia and the West. »
Since then, this brilliant diplomat, rough negotiator and fine connoisseur of international bodies for having represented Russia at the UN for a long time, has found himself more and more frequently defending positions “ indefensible from the point of view of international law remarks a French diplomat. With the invasion of Ukraine, these contortions have taken a turn for the worse.
“Propaganda organ”
« What would France do if Belgium banned French? “, he pretended to wonder on May 29 at the microphone of TF1, falsely implying that Ukraine would have banned the Russian language. A few weeks earlier, he affirmed that the Jewish origins of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not prevent the presence of Nazism in his country because “ Hitler also had Jewish blood ». This outing forced Vladimir Putin to apologize to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
“Outrageous statements are now part of his job descriptioncomments Marie Dumoulin, ex-diplomat and director of the “Wider Europe” program at the European Council on International Relations. He can do it with all the less brakes as his ministry is not a decision-maker on the subject of Ukraine. » Because it is also from the annexation of Crimea, a decision in which Sergei Lavrov would not have been associated, that the decline in the influence of his ministry dates back.
Since 2014, Vladimir Putin has indeed let the intelligence services and the army take control of the most important international issues – Ukraine, Syria and Libya in the lead. “The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on these issues, is no more than a mouthpiece », adds Marie Dumoulin, « a propaganda organ “. On February 25, it was by calling it “ chief propagandist that the United States had sanctioned Sergei Lavrov.