Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the Bucha massacre as “a specially staged antiRussian provocation spread by Western social networks”. But 28 years ago he signed the Budapest Memorandum
Working with thenForeign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who later left Russia in a dispute with Putin, Sergey Lavrov was just a brilliant diplomat who made every effort to help his boss establish international relations and smooth out any contentious elements of contact with his interlocutors. The Lavrov of that time would probably be horrified to hear the Lavrov of today uncritically repeat unbelievable and improbable statements peddled by the crudest media of Russian power. Defining Bucha’s atrocities as “an antiRussian provocation deliberately staged and disseminated by Western social networks” does not seem like a comment from a foreign officer.
And that it may come from a minister who has been in office for almost twenty years, who has dealt with situations of great tension and often helped to resolve them. It was he who showed up in front of photographers with Hillary Clinton and the famous red button that was supposed to symbolize the reset of relations between Washington and Moscow. Smiling like never before, Lavrov explained to Clinton that the Americans had misspelled the Russians, which didn’t mean “reset” at all, but “overloaded”. A Russian mother and an Armenian father, Lavrov has gone through all the steps of a typical Moscow diplomat’s career.
Initially, his surname was Kalantaryan, but young Sergei chose his mother’s, which sounded much more “Russian”. International Relations University in the capital, language studies (Sinhalese, but also English and French), a life in embassies and at the United Nations. As the Permanent Representative of Russia, he signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. The one who guaranteed Ukraine’s borders inviolable, who had just agreed to sell all of its nuclear warheads to Moscow.
April 5, 2022 (Change April 5, 2022 | 19:37)
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