Two of my colleagues at PJ Media saw that headline and both DM’d me, saying, “He’s not wrong.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is a survivor. In the cutthroat world created by Vladimir Putin, he has outlasted several other close advisors to the Russian president, largely because he keeps a low profile and never tries to show up the boss. This has made him the longest-serving foreign minister in Russia’s history.
He’s also a plain-spoken Georgian who never misses a chance to bash the United States and the West. He shares the view with Putin that the Soviet empire collapsed because of the machinations of the U.S., not because of any flaw in the Soviet System.
Yesterday at the UN, Lavrov showed why Putin puts his trust in him.
“You can call this whatever you want to call this, but they are directly at war with us. We can call this a hybrid war, but that doesn’t change the reality,” CNN reported the Russian Foreign Minister said Saturday.
Lavrov added, “They are effectively engaged in hostilities with us, using the Ukrainians as fodder.”
Biden will never admit that what Lavrov is saying is true. The Ukraine conflict is a war to protect democracy, not whittle Russia down to size. It’s a war to protect the world order formed after World War II, not stymie Russia’s imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe and reconstitute the old Soviet Union.
Exclusively for our VIPs: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Is a Failure. What Now?
Nevertheless, Lavrov’s speech to the UN General Assembly was full of sweetness and light for the rest of the world — besides the United States.
“In the speeches of many speakers who spoke before me, the idea was already voiced that our common planet is undergoing irreversible changes, and a new world order is being born before our eyes,” Lavrov said in his address to fellow member states.
“The contours of the future are being created in the struggle between the world majority, who advocate a more equitable distribution of global wealth and civilizational diversity, and between those few who use neocolonial methods of subjugation to maintain their elusive dominance.”
Lavrov referred to “outdated global governance structures,” meaning NATO and other U.S.-created organizations to keep the peace.
Lavrov dismissed a peace framework proposed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “not feasible.”
The plan does not contemplate ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia or abandoning Kyiv’s efforts to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – two sticking points for Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Minister also shut down the possibility of Russia returning to the Black Sea grain deal, saying the Kremlin felt it had been deceived.
“The main reason why we left this deal and it ceased to exist is that everything that was promised to us turned out to be a deception,” Lavrov said.
The grain deal not only supplied much of the Third World with foodstuffs but also gave the Ukrainian economy a boost. There was never anything in the deal that would have allowed Russia to export its own grain.
And Lavrov fails to mention that the “outdated governance structure” of the UN has benefitted Russia hugely. Being one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, during the first ten years of the UN’s existence, the Soviet Union was the only Security Council member to cast a veto. And since 1992, Russia has vetoed 121 times, the U.S. 82 times. Russia has been able to stymie discussion of issues that Putin doesn’t want to talk about at every turn.
I don’t trust Joe Biden to keep the United States out of a shooting war with Russia. His Ukraine policy invites conflict. But he’s gotten the U.S. into this mess, and cutting and running as some Republicans want to do would be catastrophic for Ukraine and most of our allies in the region.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member