The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the aggressor country has long since become the top mouthpiece of Russian propaganda in the international information space. Each of his speeches is a stream of false narratives, manipulations in which he tries to whitewash Russia and paint the image of a victim from his so-called country, suffering from the oppression of the “collective West”. Lavrov’s verbal performance during the meeting of the UN Security Council during the minister’s visit to Washington on July 16-17 was no exception. Although the meeting itself was devoted to the situation in the Middle East. Next, about the manipulation and lies of some of his key phrases regarding Ukraine.
False / Manipulation
MESSAGE 1. “Washington successfully re-educated him and already in 2021 Zelensky demanded that those who felt themselves part of Russian culture move to Russia for the sake of the future of their children and grandchildren…”
Lavrov talks about “re-education” in the context of the law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as a state language”, which was adopted in 2019 and began to be actively implemented in society at the turn of 2020-2021. http://surl.li/zrltcc
The law ensured the priority of the Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular, in state administration, media, education, science, culture, advertising, and services. At the same time, it is flexible enough to use other languages alongside Ukrainian and does not regulate private communication in any way.
Due to the fierce resistance to the adoption of the Law by pro-Russian forces in the parliament and society, as well as due to populist criticism of the “radicality” of the Law, a number of norms were softened. Article 24 “State language in the field of television and radio broadcasting” also underwent significant changes: 90% of broadcasts in the state language on nationwide channels were reduced to 75% after the first reading, as in the Law “On Television and Radio Broadcasting”.
However, all the same, Russian propaganda, both before the full-scale war and after it began, used the fact of the appearance of this law as an excuse to create its top narratives about the oppression of “Russian speakers”, about the persecution of “Russian culture”, about insulting “Russian violence” and etc. But all these clichés are disgusting lies and manipulation.
MESSAGE 2. “… The North Atlantic Alliance already had enough of the war it unleashed against Russia with the hands of the illegal power in Kyiv. Not enough for him and the entire OSCE space…”
This statement is an already closed Russian narrative, with which the Kremlin’s propaganda tries to shift the responsibility for the attack on Ukraine to NATO and the countries of the West. The narrative appeared in 2022, approximately in April-May, when Western countries actively joined in supporting Ukraine with military aid, finances and sanctions against Russia. At the same time, the Kremlin’s plans for a lightning war with Ukraine failed. In search of a justification for the situation, the propagandists launched and began to spread the narrative about the war in Ukraine with NATO and that it was the Alliance that provoked the Russian Federation to carry out “its” because it was expanding to the east…
As time has shown, such a message does not contain any factual basis – NATO is categorical in its position not to intervene in the war in Ukraine.
MESSAGE 2. “… In the last century, George Orwell in the story “The Cattle Yard” already predicted the essence of order based on ‘rules’, I quote: ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.’ If you play the role of a hegemon, you are allowed everything, but if you dare and start defending your national interests, you will be declared an outcast and subject to sanctions…”
This message from Lavrov has already become a kind of verbal meme. It was very aptly refuted by the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, Serhiy Kyslytsia. Verbatim in his post on the X network, he wrote the following: http://surl.li/bxdrej
“Who does miserable Lavrov think we are when he tries to mobilize Orwell for his support? Perhaps he does not know that the New York diplomats actually read Orwell, and are not byproducts of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in the Soviet Union, where Orwell’s books were banned or censored.”
Lavrov’s “…speechwriters” forgot to remind him that the writer was a critic of Stalin and hostile to Stalinism. According to Orwell himself, the satirical work “Collective Animal Farm”, to which Lavrov appeals, “reflects the events that preceded the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union – the period when Russia lived under the rule of the communist ideology of Joseph Stalin, which is so loved in today’s collective farm Russia, they almost adore…”
“… Each animal in the “Collective Farm of Animals” represented a certain class of Soviet (today’s Russian) society: the working horse Boxer – the working class and ideological Stakhanovites; the skeptical donkey Benjamin – an intelligentsia who understands everything, but is inactive; evil dogs – employees of the NKVD; speechless sheep – masses of people; Piglet Squeak – government-controlled mass media, etc.
At the top of the pyramid is a large, rather ferocious-looking Berkshire boar named Napoleon (an allegory of Joseph Stalin), who gradually rewrote the seven commandments of animalism (an allegorical reference to communism), the main of which began to sound like this: All animals are equal, but some animals more equal than others.
Yes, Comrade Lavrov, what kind of animal are you?…”