Conspiracy theories and lies by the Russian government are now part of the agenda of every conference attended by Moscow officials. But in New Delhi, the Kremlin surpasses itself. On the stage of an international conference, Foreign Minister Lavrov portrays his country as a victim of the Ukraine war.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was laughed at on the sidelines of the meeting of the chief diplomats of the G20 countries in India for his claims about the Ukraine war. Speaking on stage at the Raisina Dialogue, a multilateral conference on geopolitics in the Indian capital New Delhi, Russia’s chief diplomat spoke of the “war that we are trying to stop and that has been instigated against us using Ukrainian people”. The audience then burst out laughing. This war “of course influenced Russian politics,” continued Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin’s confidant after a short pause.
Kremlin propaganda regularly confuses perpetrators and victims. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine with the aim of overthrowing the democratically elected government in Kiev and annexing the country. In the past 12 months, Russian forces have killed tens of thousands of civilians and forced millions to flee. Given the support that Western partners are giving to Ukraine, Russian politicians and propagandists keep claiming that Russia is at war with NATO. According to observers, they are trying, among other things, to justify the failures of their own army.
Lavrov had criticized the G20 meeting right at the beginning on Wednesday as a “farce”. Western countries would “want to shift the responsibility for their economic failures onto the Russian Federation,” said the Russian foreign minister in New Delhi. He was alluding to the Western sanctions against his country because of the war, which also exacerbated the global food crisis.
In another speech in New Delhi, Lavrov accused the western states of what Russia has been criticized for for years. “Unfortunately, the West has not shed its neo-colonial habits and aspirations. Anything that is being done to subordinate the economy to Western interests is nothing more than a neo-colonial instinct, a neo-colonial practice,” said the country’s foreign minister, who himself believes in aggressive imperialism Geopolitics is accused primarily of former Soviet states.
