Sergei Lavrov – Russian Foreign Minister and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said at a conference in India that the war in Ukraine “has started against us,” prompting the crowd to burst into laughterreports “Insider”.
Lavrov was a speaker at the G20 summit in New Delhi and moderated a session that was part of the Raisina Dialogue 2023, answering questions from the audience.
One of the attendees asked him, “How has the war affected Russia’s energy strategy and will it privilege Asia? If it does, how will it affect India?”
“You know, the war we’re trying to stop that was started against us with the use of…”, Lavrov began, but was interrupted by loud laughter from the audience.
“…The Ukrainian people, um, of course, influenced…”, the Russian top diplomat tried again, before being interrupted by another wave of laughter, and one of the attendees even shouted: “Come on!”.
Speaking in India, whose government has been sympathetic to Putin’s claims on Ukraine and helped Moscow mitigate the effect of western sanctions, Lavrov says “the war we are trying to stop was launched against us.”
The audience laughs at him.
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Lavrov also pointed out that the war has influenced the energy policy of Russia and that it “will not rely on any partners” in the future.
Contrary to his claim, Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and caused the largest military conflict in Europe after the Second World War, notes “Insider”.
The Kremlin gives a number of justifications for the invasion of its forces, including claims that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and lost his family in the Holocaust.
Russia supports the version and that NATO expansion has provoked the conflict. However, Ukraine is not a member of the Alliance, nor was it on track to join when the invasion began.
From the collapse of the USSR to the war in Ukraine – where did Europe go wrong?
Long before Putin, in 1994, Boris Yeltsin warned Westerners
Experts agree that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine out of ambitions to revive Russia as an imperial power. Putin, who once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century, compared himself to Peter the Great as he justified Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The Russian leader claims that Ukraine is not a real country and distorts the view of historyto justify Russia’s brutal campaign to subjugate its neighbor, the “Insider” also points out.
The Russian Empire controlled much of Ukraine before later making it part of the Soviet Union. In 1991, however, the Ukrainian people overwhelmingly voted for independence from the USSR, showing that they did not want to be subordinated to Moscow.
Russia was condemned around the world for its invasion of Ukraine and is facing charges of war crimes.
