Sergey V. Lavrov is a Russian diplomat instrumental in the wheeling and dealing between the United States and Russia on the matter of Syria, and the New York Times has an extensive profile on the man.
In the profile, Sergey comes across not entirely unlike a second-string James Bond villain, giving women reporters flowers and spending his off time kayaking, skiing, smoking cigars, or drinking expensive scotch. He even has a James Bond-ian nickname – “Minister Nyet” – due to his apparently unwavering ability to get what he wants during negotiations.
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Sergey spent time in Iraq as the deputy head of the United Nations’ weapons inspectors program, overseeing the dismantling of Iraqi weapons during and after the first Iraq war. It’s this that has allowed him to so quickly and so definitely assure Secretary Kerry that he knows what he’s doing in brokering the chemical weapons dismantling in Syria. Yet the most interesting aspect, to some readers, of Mister Lavrov, is what the NYT describes in lines such as:
Mr. Lavrov, a chain-smoker, is known as an old-school diplomat. He flatly ignored an effort by Secretary General Kofi Annan to ban smoking in the United Nations headquarters, saying Mr. Annan did not own the building. He enjoys whiskey and cigars, and his hobbies tend toward action sports like rafting and skiing.
And:
When a photographer asked Mr. Lavrov, Mr. Kerry and the special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, to pose after a meeting in Geneva, Mr. Lavrov said: “You don’t give us orders; you just capture the moment.”
What people in the West seem to dislike about Lavrov is what he’s perhaps so well-regarded for in Russian political circles: his innate ability to not give too much of a fuck about what you’re thinking and asking for, and to achieve diplomacy not through pandering and handholding but through hard talks. While Russia may still be home to some incredibly ill-advised civil rights policies (especially regarding LGBT relations), they may have the right idea when it comes to achieving diplomacy. Too often are American politicians afraid of saying the wrong thing. Mister Lavrov, at least, isn’t afraid to tell it as he see’s it.
