Seeing the forces stacked against him at the G20, President Vladimir Putin assigned Lavrov to attend the two-day event in his stead, and for a brief moment it seemed too much. News agencies reported that Lavrov had been sent to hospital for a check-up, only for the Russian Foreign Ministry to rush out a photo of Lavrov in shorts and an Apple Watch and Jean-Michel Basquiat-inspired T-shirt scribbling down his notes. first speech at the summit on Tuesday. Sergei Lavrov reads documents on a patio in Bali, Indonesia on Monday. Photo: Maria Zakharova/Telegram/Reuters The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced what it called Western propaganda as a high-level lie. Paradoxically, if Lavrov succumbed to genuine ill health, it would be a moment of genuine regret for some Western diplomats, who for more than two decades have engaged in this strand of Russian diplomacy. “He is a fraud,” said one Western diplomat, “but we all know his outbursts are stage-managed and calculated. It’s all smiles afterwards. He is a professional.” With a glamorous stepdaughter Polina, his career in the service of the Russian state has been well spent and rewarding. Born in 1950 towards the end of the Stalin era to diplomatic parents, he studied at the elite Russian Institute of International Relations before rising to become Russia’s envoy to the UN, where for a decade he lived through the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Join. At the time, then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Lavrov seemed a man unmoored from his country’s fate. He was appointed Secretary of State in 2004 and has since, through successive US administrations, developed a Putinesque distaste for all Western ideas, if not all Western consumer durables. At one point, he said that all the ills of 20th century colonialism, the two world wars and the cold war lay at the door of American arrogance. He has clashed with the US over Iraq, Iran, Syria and now Ukraine, all the while staying well informed and true to his own motto, “Don’t rush, but pursue your goals with doggedness.” The constant theme was the need to end the US monopoly on the international order. But he also knows when to stop the verbal attacks. He once ended talks with then-US Secretary of State John Kerry with a post-midnight dinner at the State Department guest house and a toast to the American B-50B bomber that made the world’s first nonstop round-the-world flight in 1949 –– with a wine of that year. The number of foreign ministers who have come and gone during Lavrov’s time at the foreign ministry – seven – is a testament to his longevity and usefulness to Putin, even if he is not considered part of the inner sanctum of decision-makers. That he has survived this long, given his intake of whiskey, vodka and cigarette smoke, is a tribute to his credibility with Putin, but also a rebuke to health advocates around the world. Besides ice hockey and soccer, Lavrov is said to be happiest going rafting and fishing with friends in Siberia. It is in the last year that he has faced his most punishment. He had made a career of condemning the US for meddling in the affairs of other countries, elevating it to the highest point of Russian authority, and had to rally to defend the special military operation in Ukraine, presenting it as an operation to defend Russian minorities caused by Russian aggression. It will take more than a health scare at the G20 to stop him relentlessly sticking to his talking points.
