1. Sergey Lavrov is the longest-serving Russian foreign minister since Andrei Gromyko during the Soviet Union.
78 Facts About Sergey Lavrov
1. 2.
Sergey Lavrov received his first Soviet diplomatic posting in Sri Lanka, and speaks fluent Sinhala, Dhivehi, English, and French, in addition to his native Russian.
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From 1981 to 1988 Sergey Lavrov held several posts in the Soviet Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City.
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Sergey Lavrov was the permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004.
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Sergey Lavrov gained a reputation for assertively defending Russia's foreign policy interests and was considered to be the most influential member of the United Nations Security Council.
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Sergey Lavrov was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in March 2004.
7.
Sergey Lavrov was born on 21 March 1950 in Moscow, to an Armenian father from Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, and a Russian mother from Noginsk, Russian SFSR.
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Sergey Lavrov's mother worked in the Soviet Ministry for Foreign Trade.
9.
Sergey Lavrov was employed in the Soviet embassy in Sri Lanka as an advisor, as he was already a specialist on the country.
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Sergey Lavrov was given the task of continuously analysing the situation in the country, but he worked as a translator, personal secretary and assistant to Rafiq Nishonov, who would later become the 12th First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbek SSR.
11.
Sergey Lavrov worked as a third and second secretary in the Section for International Economic Relations of the USSR.
12.
In 1988, Sergey Lavrov returned to Moscow and was named Deputy Chief of the Section for International Economic Relations of the USSR.
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In 1992, Sergey Lavrov was named director of the Department for International Organizations and Global Issues in the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation.
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Sergey Lavrov worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1994 when he returned to work in the United Nations, this time as the Permanent Representative of Russia.
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Sergey Lavrov held on to his position through Vladimir Putin's Second Cabinet while Dmitri Medvedev occupied the presidency from 2008 to 2012.
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On 21 May 2012, Sergey Lavrov was reappointed foreign minister to the cabinet led by prime minister Dimitri Medvedev.
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Sergey Lavrov is regarded as continuing in the style of his predecessor: a brilliant diplomat but a civil servant rather than a politician.
18.
US politicians have been much more critical in their appraisal of Sergey Lavrov, seeing him as emblematic of President Putin's resurgent violent foreign policies.
19.
In September 2013, then Secretary of State John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov reached a breakthrough agreement that would destroy almost all chemical weapons stored in Assad's Syria.
20.
In October 2019, Sergey Lavrov condemned Donald Trump's decision to send American troops to guard Syria's oil fields and possibly exploit them, saying that any "exploitation of natural resources of a sovereign state without its consent is illegal".
21.
Amid the 2024 Syrian opposition offensives and subsequent fall of Damascus, Sergey Lavrov was reported to have led efforts to facilitate the departure of president Assad by negotiating with Turkey and Qatar to persuade Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham to let Assad leave Syria.
22.
Sergey Lavrov stressed federalism as a solution to the constitutional impasse in Ukraine, and deplored the de-officialisation of the Russian language.
23.
Sergey Lavrov noticed the work of the secretariat of the Council of Europe at the Venice Commission to prevent a legitimation of the Crimean referendum, and to expel Russia.
24.
Sergey Lavrov was "taken aback" when US President Barack Obama called Russia a "regional power".
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Sergey Lavrov stated that the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv and the results of the Crimean referendum should both be accepted equally by the West.
26.
Sergey Lavrov reiterated the three-part Russian proposal for the progress of Ukraine:.
27.
Sergey Lavrov criticized US sanctions against countries like Iran, Turkey and Russia.
28.
Sergey Lavrov condemned Ukraine's 2017 education law, which makes Ukrainian the only language of education in state schools.
29.
In 2021, Sergey Lavrov was critical of a massive NATO-led military exercise called Defender-Europe 21, one of the largest NATO-led military exercises in Europe in decades, which began in March 2021.
30.
On 4 February 2022, Sergey Lavrov dismissed as "nonsense" and "craziness" allegations by the United States that Russia was preparing a fake video of the Ukrainian forces attacking the separatist-held Donbas as a pretext for starting a war in Ukraine.
31.
On 10 February 2022, Sergey Lavrov met with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
32.
Sergey Lavrov denied that Russia has any plans to invade Ukraine.
33.
Sergey Lavrov described Western "demands to remove Russian troops from Russian territory" as "regrettable".
34.
On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia began an invasion of Ukraine, Sergey Lavrov claimed that Putin ordered the invasion to "free Ukrainians from oppression".
35.
On 2 March 2022, Sergey Lavrov explained in an interview with Al Jazeera, Moscow, how the invasion of Ukraine came about in the context of an international crisis that already existed well before 2014.
36.
Sergey Lavrov continued that Zelenskyy did not improve the situation any further, and that Putin had to order the invasion of Ukraine, because the US did not comply or even address the security concerns of Russia's western flank.
37.
Sergey Lavrov claimed the US exerted similar pressures on Iraq in 2003, which the US invaded later for no reason other than "a vial of unidentified chemicals".
38.
On 10 March 2022, Sergey Lavrov met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Antalya, Turkey.
39.
Sergey Lavrov said without evidence that the Russian military bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol because it was a base for the Azov Battalion.
40.
On 1 May 2022, in an interview with the Italian television broadcaster Rete 4, Sergey Lavrov was asked why Russia claimed it needed to "denazify" Ukraine, considering the Ukrainian president himself, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.
41.
On 14 May 2022, Sergey Lavrov used the phrase "total hybrid war" in the course of describing the West's efforts to help Ukraine combat the 2022 Russian invasion.
42.
On 6 June 2022, according to Vecernje novosti, Sergey Lavrov was due to visit the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
43.
Sergey Lavrov was asked about a report by the United Nations on an incident involving the Russian military in Yahidne, Ukraine.
44.
On 8 July 2022, Sergey Lavrov left the G20 summit of foreign ministers in Bali, Indonesia because he disliked the questions about the invasion of Ukraine.
45.
Sergey Lavrov left when German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock began her formal address.
46.
Ukraine sympathizers refused to join a group photo with Sergey Lavrov, who seemed perplexed at the criticism.
47.
On 20 July 2022, Sergey Lavrov publicly confirmed that Russia had as a goal not only to "liberate" the Donbas region, but to occupy the Kherson region, the Zaporizhzhia region and several other territories, supposedly as a response to Ukraine receiving weapons support from abroad.
48.
On 11 September 2022, Sergey Lavrov said that he has not given up on the idea of peace talks with Kyiv.
49.
One week before the 2022 Russian mobilization, Sergey Lavrov assured the Russians that there would be no mobilization or martial law.
50.
Sergey Lavrov attempted to convince the audience that 'countries supplying weapons to Ukraine and training its soldiers were parties to the conflict'.
51.
Sergey Lavrov said that Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine would be under Russia's "full protection" if they are annexed by Russia.
52.
An aide subsequently released a video on Telegram showing Sergey Lavrov laughing at such reports from his hotel in Bali, claiming Western media was at fault for "some kind of game".
53.
Sergey Lavrov stated: "Our absolute priority is four new Russian regions".
54.
Sergey Lavrov stated that peace talks with Ukraine would only resume if it recognized the annexation of the four regions only partially occupied: "They should become free from the threat of Nazification that they have faced for many years".
55.
On 4 March 2023 the BBC reported that Sergey Lavrov was ridiculed by a conference audience after a G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Delhi after saying the Ukraine war was "launched against us".
56.
Sergey Lavrov claimed Russia was trying to stop the Ukraine war, which began after its own full-scale invasion in February 2022.
57.
On 6 April 2023, Sergey Lavrov again visited Turkey to meet his counter-part Mevlut Cavusoglu.
58.
Previously Western media had accused Sergey Lavrov of obstructing Ukrainian grain shipments.
59.
In May 2023, Sergey Lavrov said that Germany was supporting Ukraine because today's German leaders inherited "Nazi genes".
60.
In July 2022, Sergey Lavrov visited Egypt, Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia and praised the neutral position taken by African countries towards the war in Ukraine.
61.
On 28 July 2022, Sergey Lavrov attended the meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
62.
Sergey Lavrov met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and praised the "traditional friendship" between Russia and China.
63.
On 2 September 2022, Sergey Lavrov was concerned over the delay in obtaining US visas for himself and his staff for the yearly meeting of world leaders at the UNGA on 19 September.
64.
Sergey Lavrov backed India and Brazil for permanent membership at the UN Security Council.
65.
On 19 April 2023, Sergey Lavrov started his official tour to South and Central America as well as Cuba.
66.
Sergey Lavrov continued the tour a day later to visit Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, a staunch Russian ally.
67.
Later that week, Sergey Lavrov paid visits to Cuba and finally Nicaragua.
68.
In June 2023, Sergey Lavrov took part in a BRICS Foreign Ministers Meeting in Cape Town chaired by South Africa.
69.
Sergey Lavrov met with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, who was in Cape Town.
70.
On 28 December 2023, Sergey Lavrov praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not criticizing Russia in public statements, unlike his predecessor, Yair Lapid.
71.
Sergey Lavrov drew a parallel between Russia's goals of "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine, and Israel's stated goals of defeating Hamas and extremism in the Gaza Strip.
72.
In June 2024, Sergey Lavrov thanked Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for China's decision not to attend the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland.
73.
In June 2024, on the sidelines of the BRICS foreign ministers' summit in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Sergey Lavrov held bilateral talks with the foreign ministers of Brazil, South Africa, Iran, Laos, Thailand and Ethiopia.
74.
On March 21,2025, Sergey Lavrov was awarded the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called, the highest order of the Russian Federation, by Presidential Decree of the Russian Federation No 160 for "outstanding services to the Fatherland, a significant contribution to the development and implementation of the foreign policy course of the Russian Federation, and many years of fruitful public service".
75.
Sergey Lavrov likes to watch football games on television and is an ardent fan of the Moscow club Spartak Moscow.
76.
Sergey Lavrov has been married since 1971 to Maria Lavrova and they have one daughter and two grandchildren.
77.
Sergey Lavrov has allegedly had a relationship with his mistress, Svetlana Polyakova, since the early 2000s.
78.
Sergey Lavrov has a master's degree from Imperial College London.