Sergey Lavrov is considered a tough diplomat and one of Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants. During a press round, he sharply attacked a journalist. The Russian foreign minister revealed his world view.
Cathy Newman is considered a courageous reporter. She is known for asking even the awkward questions. And that’s what the British journalist did on Thursday during a Kremlin surprisingly convened press round. She confronted Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov with the numerous war atrocities that took place in the first week of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine have already become known.
Newman immediately used the first of the two questions she was granted during an interview with a dozen international journalists to talk regarding Polina Zapadynskaya. The Ukrainian girl, who was still in elementary school, was killed a few days ago in Kyiv, presumably by a Russian bomb attack. “Mr. Lavrov, you have a daughter yourself,” Newman began to confront the always grim-looking foreign minister directly. “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me how you can still sleep soundly at night knowing that Russian bombs and bullets are killing children?”
For a brief moment, Lavrov seemed surprised, first sorting his hands and affirming that every human life is irreplaceable, only to coolly add that the use of military force might not only affect military personnel, but civilians as well. However, the Russian troops are instructed to only carry out precision strikes in their attacks in Ukraine. And of course he regrets it if children die. “I can only offer my condolences.”
Feared for its outbursts
The 71-year-old is Europe’s longest-serving foreign minister. Since 2004 he has represented the Russian Federation in the world. He is considered a politician who knows all the ropes, a tough negotiator who has long been part of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and is known for embarrassing those he doesn’t like in front of the cameras. Among diplomats and journalists, the eloquence and lightning-fast mind of the 1.88 meter tall giant are just as feared as his occasional outbursts.
And Newman, who works for the British TV channel Channel 4-News, did not give up. “They say precision missiles are being used, but there are reports that hundreds of civilians have already been killed,” she said. “This will now be investigated by the International Criminal Court and I wonder if you have personally thought regarding how you will defend yourself in a war crimes trial?”
Lavrov’s eyes darkened. “I understand your need to ask such angry questions,” he said. “You want to stir up emotions in your audience, but I guess that’s your job, if I understand correctly. They don’t want to be a (serious) medium, they want to hammer something into people’s heads that is required of the leaders of the West.”
Backed into a corner
The personal attack is part of the standard repertoire of Putin’s chief diplomat. “Who the hell are you to discipline me?” he is said to have snapped at the then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband during a telephone conversation in 2008. It was not until early February that Lavrov publicly snubbed his British counterpart, Liz Truss, when he accused her of insufficient preparation for her visit to Moscow at a press conference. “I feel like a mute is talking to a deaf person here,” he etched.
Lavrov with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. The mood between the two counterparts was pretty cool in February 2022. (Source: imago images)
Speaking to TV journalist Newman, Lavrov gave a prime example of how he reacts when someone tries to corner him. With reference to military operations by the West, he tried to put the allegations once morest him into perspective. “We (Russians) are not the ones who invented the term collateral damage. Our Western colleagues worried regarding that during their escapades in Iraq or in other regions like Latin America or Libya… Did you also ask such emotional questions there?”
“Yes, I certainly have,” Newman countered. “But you started this war, Polina Zapadinskaya’s blood is on your hands, isn’t it?” She was now visibly upset. “Now you’re playing a game with me,” Lavrov reprimanded the journalist sharply. “You’re acting like you’re on a talk show.” Lavrov sent a meaningful look in the direction of his press officer, but then continued.
The world view of the judoka
His remarks that followed contained the Kremlin’s world view as if under a magnifying glass. The invasion of Ukraine was only the result of Ukrainian provocations and years of atrocities in the country Donbass, according to Lavrov. This narrative fits into the narrative of the “security operation” that Russia in Ukraine allegedly to protect its own people. A narrative that the Kremlin’s propaganda has been drumming into the Russian population for weeks and months.
2008: Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov (l), President Vladimir Putin (2nd left) and the former Libyan dictator Muammar al-Ghaddafi in the garden of his residence in Bab al Azizia. (Source: TASS/imago images)
However, Lavrov not only re-declared the aggressive war, which according to international law violated international law, into an inevitable defensive operation. He once once more reversed the roles in the brief dialogue when he accused Newman of having no conscience, working unprofessionally and doing her journalistic work purely for propaganda purposes. “Where were you in the past eight years when thousands of women, children and the elderly were killed by mines operated by the Ukrainian regime in Donbass?”
The appearance of the Russian foreign minister once once more demonstrated the well-known rhetoric of the Kremlin. Like Putin, Lavrov also knows how to fend off his opponent with words. Her favorite way of doing this: turning the opponent’s attack energy once morest himself. This is the principle in the martial art of judo. Putin is an experienced judoka.
It is also the principle of rabulistics, that somewhat half-baked rhetorical technique that is regarding being right at all costs. Lavrov might be called an experienced Rabulist. According to Duden, a Rabulist is someone who argues in a “subtle, petty, opinionated way, often twisting the true facts”.
