Long nicknamed “Mister No” at the UN, Sergei Lavrov perhaps deserves, since the launch of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the nickname “Mr. Attention”. The Russian Foreign Minister is in the front line to relay the Kremlin’s propaganda and embellish it with thinly veiled threats towards the countries which arm kyiv and sanction Moscow. In France, part of the general public has undoubtedly discovered it through its alarming statements. As when he warned, at the end of April, against the risk “real” of a Third World War and the use of nuclear weapons.
The image of this very experienced diplomat has been even more tarnished since a statement on Italian television on May 1. “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood”he argued, after explaining that the Jewish origins of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not exempt him from the accusations of Nazism by which Russia justifies its offensive. “Minister Lavrov’s remarks are at once outrageous, unforgivable and a horrific historical error”, slammed his Israeli counterpart, Yair Lapid. While Sergei Lavrov’s ministry maintained its position, accusing Israel of “support the neo-Nazi regime in kyiv”, this aberrant statement forced Vladimir Putin to apologize to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday, May 5. What is not really in his habits.
In the eyes of Sylvie Bermann, hearing such remarks from Sergei Lavrov is “pretty implausible” given his background: “He is someone who has a great culture and who knows international relations by heart.” Ambassador of France to Russia from 2017 to 2019, the diplomat met Lavrov much earlier, in the mid-1990s, when he became Russia’s envoy to United Nations headquarters. “At the time, he was a star, an excellent negotiator, who knew his files very well.” Already firm, but not closed to compromise, he was “rather appreciated, even admired” in this environment of UN diplomats.
Why such excess today? “He is the voice of his master”, observes Sylvie Bermann. For her, the Security Council staged by Vladimir Putin three days before the start of the invasion, during which he had humiliated the head of foreign intelligence, summarizes the little choice available to men like Sergei Lavrov: “Either they follow orders or we don’t know what can happen to them.” A very vertical vision of Russian power confirmed by Jean-Maurice Ripert, predecessor of Sylvie Bermann at the French Embassy in Moscow, from 2013 to 2017: “In the presence of Putin, Lavrov does not open his mouth.”
Sergei Lavrov does not seem to have any particular complicity with the Russian president. A career diplomat, he is not part of his close circle of KGB veterans. His longevity as Minister of Foreign Affairs is however unusual: more than eighteen years. “He wants to beat [Andreï] Gromyko”, one of his Soviet predecessors who remained in business for twenty-eight years, Vladimir Putin once explained. Present, Jean-Maurice Ripert had perceived a background of mockery towards his faithful servant.
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But the latter has obviously convinced the Kremlin of his loyalty and efficiency. And contributed, since 2004, to giving back to Russia an important geopolitical weight, by new alliances (in particular in the Middle East or in Africa) but especially by a certain power of nuisance. It was by systematically vetoing UN Security Council resolutions on Syria (16 between 2011 and 2020), an ally of Moscow, that he earned the nickname “Monsieur Niet” (“no” in Russian), which already referred to the famous Andrei Gromyko.
Despite the stiffness of his tall figure, Sergei Lavrov is not necessarily the dull apparatchik that one might imagine. If he does not pour out on his private life, he is known to have a taste for whiskey, the guitar, the Spartak Moscow football club (seen as the people’s team in Soviet times) or even rafting . He was photographed at least once paddle in hand, in a staging of Russian virility which is reminiscent of that of Vladimir Putin. “He has a certain presence, and he is one of the most popular state figures in Russia”explains Sylvie Bermann. “When you meet him, he can be quite friendly and quite funnyremembers Jean-Maurice Ripert. I don’t think that’s the bully he’s trying to show.”
Toughness is indeed Sergei Lavrov’s most obvious character trait. “Who are you to give me a fucking lesson?” he had replied to his UK counterpart David Miliband in a stormy phone call in 2008 about Georgia, according to the British press – comments denied by Lavrov. More recently, in mid-February, the new British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, heard him compare their meeting to “a conversation between a deaf and a mute”.
This attitude, not so far removed from the portrayal of Vladimir Putin, seems to have hardened over time. “He self-caricatured so much that he became odious”Judge Jean-Maurice Ripert.
“He could have given himself the role of the ‘nice diplomat’ who fixes the problems created by the military. But he never wanted to play it.”
Jean-Maurice Ripert, former French Ambassador to Russiaat franceinfo
The French diplomat finds that the expression of “wolf warrior”used by the Chinese to describe their ambassadors, also corresponds to Sergei Lavrov: “Someone who is not there to make Russia understood or loved, but to make her feared.”
What does this zealous servant of the Kremlin really think of the speech he is relaying? In Putin’s Russia, his role is not to take initiatives. To the point that the two former French ambassadors are struggling to discern his real point of view on the status of Ukraine, beyond his determination to carry Vladimir Putin’s projects.
But he does not hide his lofty idea of Russia’s place in the world. When he became Russia’s representative to the United Nations in 1994, he contrasted with his predecessor by breaking away from the American line, remembers Sylvie Bermann. Now 72, two years older than Vladimir Putin, “Sergei Lavrov began to serve the USSR when it was a great country, respected in the worldrecalls the former ambassador. For people of this generation, it is difficult to accept that the Russian position is ignored, as was the case in the 1990s.
Over time, he seems to have developed a growing resentment towards Westerners, observes the French diplomat, who recalls meetings between Sergei Lavrov and European ambassadors during his visit to Moscow, between 2017 and 2019:
“He often made big speeches about the past and his feeling of a ‘double standard’ towards Russia. He felt that there were rules that we wanted to impose on them without respecting them ourselves.”
Sylvie Bermann, former French Ambassador to Russiaat franceinfo
The death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was often on the table, as was the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, which Russia opposed. “Obsessions he shares with Vladimir Putin”notes Sylvie Bermann.
One episode particularly marked his predecessor Jean-Maurice Ripert. After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher, Sergei Lavrov represents Russia at the march organized in Paris on January 11, 2015. But the protocol order relegates him to the last row: as minister, he comes after the many heads of state present. “Obviously, he had conceived a certain sadness from it.”
Back in Moscow, the minister holds one of his meetings with the ambassadors of EU countries. Jean-Maurice Ripert takes the floor and tries to thank him for his support. Sergei Lavrov cuts him off immediately, and undertakes to blame France for the attacks.
“He explains to me that France, on the one hand, has forgotten its Christian roots and leaves too much freedom to Islam and, on the other hand, that it mistreats the Muslim community. speech, but he prevented me from speaking.”
Jean-Maurice Ripert, former French Ambassador to Russiaat franceinfo
The head of Russian diplomacy showed more compassion the following year, after the July 14 attack in Nice, going to the French embassy with the American John Kerry to lay flowers there and sign the register of condolences. “He looked sincerely touched”remembers the ambassador.
But, like Vladimir Putin, he sometimes used this rhetoric about the cultural and historical differences between Russia and Western Europe. Not without inconsistency, for a man who spent almost ten years in New York when he represented Russia at the UN. His only daughter lived for a long time in the United States and in the United Kingdom, where also resided the daughter of the collaborator who has long been suspected of being his mistress. The two young women have been sanctioned by the British authorities since the invasion of Ukraine.
“He became the attendant of lies”, observes Jean-Maurice Ripert. It was Sergei Lavrov who hastened to declare that the maternity ward destroyed by a Russian strike in Mariupol at the beginning of March no longer housed patients, but fighters from the Azov battalion. A few hours later, the Russian Ministry of Defense advanced a contradictory lie, presenting this bombardment as a scene.
The episode recalls the growing place taken by the military, with whom he must deal. During Sylvie Bermann’s visit to Moscow, “The two most important foreign policy issues were not handled by his ministry: Syria was largely under the Ministry of Defense, and Ukraine was entirely under the Kremlin.” “Lavrov’s problem is that he is chasing the traincomments Jean-Maurice Ripert. In those cases, you’re adding a little too much.”
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In 2018, Sergei Lavrov was announced on the departure, remembers Sylvie Bermann. He’s still there, and “if there is ever a peace negotiation with Russia, it will go through him”, emphasizes Jean-Maurice Ripert. But for the French diplomat, the excess of his speech on the invasion of Ukraine made him lose “all his credibility, which was already not so tall after the operation in Syria”. On March 1, when the Russian minister was to speak by videoconference at the Swiss headquarters of the United Nations, most of the delegations present left the premises in protest. In the institution where he had built his image as a respected diplomat, his speech echoed in an almost empty room.