Just because Sergey Lavrov and Vladimir Putin are Russian doesn’t mean that listening to them is not worthwhile. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:
On November 18, 2021, Putin held a meeting with Russian diplomats. Facing renewed vows that Ukraine would enter NATO and continued concerns that NATO’s “military potential and infrastructure [would be] in the vicinity of Russian borders,” Putin turned to his minister of foreign affairs, Sergey Lavrov, and said, “it is imperative to push for serious, long-term guarantees that safeguard Russia’s security . . ..”
One month later, Russia presented the US and NATO with a proposal on those mutual security guarantees. A month after that, the US rejected Russia’s central demand that NATO keep its promise and not expand into Ukraine.
The US had rejected what NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would later call Putin’s “pre-condition for not invad[ing] Ukraine.” Lavrov remarked that “our Western colleagues are not prepared to take up our major proposals, primarily those on NATO’s eastward non-expansion.” But what seemed to really surprise the veteran diplomat was not that the US insisted on its “open-door policy” on Ukraine joining NATO, but that it closed the door on diplomacy: “Neither the United States, nor the North Atlantic Alliance proposed an alternative to this key provision.”
Lavrov has been Russia’s foreign minister, under Putin and Medvedev, since 2004. He is very respected and, retired US ambassador Chas Freeman told me, has a reputation amongst diplomats as being “very competent and professional.” Lavrov’s statements are important insights into Russian policy. Freeman says, Lavrov is “meticulously loyal and completely trustworthy in the eyes of his president.”
