Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (, ; born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat who has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2004. He is the country's longest-serving foreign minister since the Tsarist era.
After graduating from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1972, Lavrov began his diplomatic career in Sri Lanka and speaks fluent Sinhala, Dhivehi, English, and French, in addition to his native Russian. From 1981 to 1988 he held several posts in the Soviet Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City. Starting in the late 1980s he was deputy director and then director of the Foreign Ministry's Department of International Organizations before becoming a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1992. He served as Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004, where he gained a reputation for assertively defending Russian interests during crises, including the Kosovo War and the Iraq invasion. Throughout his tenure, Lavrov has remained a central figure in shaping Russia's foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin.
Early life and education Lavrov was born on 21 March 1950 in Tbilisi (Georgian SSR), or in Moscow. His father, Viktor Gabrielovich Kalantarov, who descended from a branch of the medieval Armenian princely family of the Kalantaryans that became Russified as Kalantarovs on settling in Tbilisi at the end of the 19th century, worked in foreign trade. His mother, Kaleriya Borisovna, came from a station master's family in Noginsk, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, and similarly held a position at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade. With his parents frequently away on secondments, or due to family reasons, Lavrov was raised from an early age in Noginsk by his maternal grandparents. He followed a curriculum with extended English first at the and then at the , from which he graduated with a . Since his favourite class was physics, he considered applying to the National Research Nuclear University or the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, but eventually graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1972.
During his education at the MGIMO, Lavrov studied international relations. Soon he learned Sinhalese, then the only official language of Sri Lanka, as well as Dhivehi, the official language of the Maldives. He also learned English and French. After he was admitted to the university, Lavrov, along with other students, was sent for a month to a student construction brigade building the Ostankino Tower.
During his summer vacations, Lavrov also worked in his university's student construction brigades in Khakassia, Tuva and the Russian Far East. Each semester, Lavrov with his fellow students conducted drama performances, which were later presented on the main stage of the university. During the third year of his studies, Lavrov was married.
Career Soviet diplomat in Sri Lanka (1972–1975) Lavrov graduated in 1972. According to the rules of that time, a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations had to work for the Foreign Ministry for a certain amount of time. Lavrov was employed in the Soviet embassy in Sri Lanka as an advisor, as he was already a specialist on the country. At the time, the Soviet Union and Sri Lanka had close market and economic cooperation and the Soviet Union launched the production of natural rubber in the country.
The Soviet embassy in Sri Lanka also maintained relations with the Maldives. The embassy in Sri Lanka employed only 24 diplomats. Lavrov was given the task of continuously analysing the situation in the country, but he also 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. In addition, he gained the diplomatic rank of an attaché.
USSR Section for International Economic Relations and the UN In 1976, Lavrov returned to Moscow. He worked as a third and second secretary in the Section for International Economic Relations of the USSR. There, he was involved in analytics and his office also worked with various international organizations, including the United Nations.
In 1981, he was sent as a senior adviser to the Soviet mission to the United Nations in New York City.
In 1988, Lavrov returned to Moscow and was named Deputy Chief of the Section for International Economic Relations of the USSR. Between 1990 and 1992 he worked as Director of the International Organization of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.
Soviet-to-CIS transition (1992–1994) In October 1991, Andrey Kozyrev, who was in charge of monitoring international organizations at the time, was named Foreign Minister of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR). In that year, the powers of the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Ministry of the Russian SFSR were distributed. Until then the Russian SFSR had only a ceremonial role. In October 1992, the foreign ministers of all Soviet republics, except Georgia and the Baltic states, held a meeting where they dealt with the Union of Foreign Ministries.
In November 1991, the State Council decided to change its name from the Union of Foreign Ministries to the Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union. In April 1992, he was named deputy foreign minister.
In December 1991, the Foreign Ministry of Soviet Russia became the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation.
In 1992, Lavrov was named director of the Department for International Organizations and Global Issues in the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation.
Lavrov was asked to oversee the activities of the Human Rights and International Cultural Cooperation and the two departments – for the CIS countries, international organizations and international economic cooperation.
Lavrov was promoted to the diplomatic rank of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary — the highest diplomatic rank in the Russian Federation — by the Decree of the then President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, on 5 June 1992 No. 568.
Russian Permanent Representative to the UN (1994–2004) 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. While in the latter position, he was the President of the United Nations Security Council in December 1995, June 1997, July 1998, October 1999,"Presidents of the Security Council: 1990–1999" , UN.org. December 2000, April 2002, and June 2003."Presidents of the Security Council : 2000–" , UN.org.
Foreign minister of Russia (2004–present)
On 9 March 2004, President Vladimir Putin appointed Lavrov to the post of minister of foreign affairs. He succeeded Igor Ivanov in the post.
Lavrov held on to his position through Vladimir Putin's Second Cabinet while Dmitri Medvedev occupied the presidency from 2008 to 2012.
On 21 May 2012, Lavrov was reappointed foreign minister to the cabinet led by prime minister Dimitri Medvedev.
Lavrov is regarded as continuing in the style of his predecessor: a brilliant diplomat but a civil servant rather than a politician. A Russian foreign policy expert at London's Chatham House has described him as "a tough, reliable, extremely sophisticated negotiator" but adds that "he's not part of Putin's inner sanctum" and that the toughening of Russian foreign policy has got very little to do with him.
US politicians have been much more critical in their appraisal of Lavrov, seeing him as emblematic of President Putin's resurgent violent foreign policies. Then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found that Lavrov treated her poorly during negotiations, like a "jerk." Several Obama administration officials interviewed for a profile on Lavrov described him as an “anti-diplomat” with “nothing redeemable” about his “uncharismatic, offensive, uncompromising, cruel, unlikeable, brusque, caddish” character.
On 15 January 2020, he resigned as part of the cabinet, after President Vladimir Putin delivered the Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, in which he proposed several amendments to the constitution. On 21 January 2020, he maintained his position in Mikhail Mishustin's Cabinet.
Civil war in Syria In 2012, in the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, a Russian delegation travelled to Syria to affirm Russia's backing of the Syrian government of the President Bashar al-Assad. Lavrov and Mikhail Fradkov, who were part of the delegation, were given a favourable welcome by thousands of pro-Assad supporters. The supporters waved Russian flags in thanks to Russia's veto of a UN resolution calling for tough sanctions on the Syrian government.
In September 2013, then Secretary of State John Kerry and Lavrov reached a breakthrough agreement that would destroy almost all chemical weapons stored in Assad's Syria. The deal was reached after three challenging rounds of talks in Geneva, Switzerland. Soon after, Syria fully accepted this plan, and by June 2014 all chemical weapons submitted by the Syrian government were safely incinerated in the Eastern Mediterranean. The director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at the United Nations declared that this treaty was a major benchmark.Archive of fact-check "Kerry: We got '100 percent' of chemical weapons out of Syria" politifact.com. Retrieved 7 March 2022.
In October 2019, 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".
Amid the 2024 Syrian opposition offensives and subsequent fall of Damascus, 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.
Russian annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas
Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, on 30 March 2014 Lavrov proposed that Ukraine should be independent of any bloc, that the Russian language be recognized officially, and that the constitution be organized along federal lines. In an interview with the Russia-24 TV channel, Lavrov said that the zero-sum "either-or" bloc-politics of Ukraine were first suggested in 2004 by Karel De Gucht, then Foreign Minister of Belgium.
When G8 leaders voted to officially suspend Russia's membership on 24 March, Lavrov stated that the G8 was an informal organization and membership was optional for Russia.
In a 30 March interview, he spoke of the 21 February agreement which was signed by Viktor Yanukovich, Vitaly Klitchko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Oleg Tyagnibok as well as the Foreign Ministers of Poland, France and Germany to promote peaceful changes in Ukrainian power. Lavrov stressed federalism as a solution to the constitutional impasse in Ukraine, and deplored the de-officialisation of the Russian language. He 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. Lavrov was "taken aback" when US President Barack Obama called Russia a "regional power". He deplored the misuse of the Schengen Agreement to force Crimeans to visit Kyiv in order to gain a Schengen visa, and noticed that the EU proposes a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens. Lavrov stated that the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv and the results of the Crimean referendum should both be accepted equally by the West. He reiterated the three-part Russian proposal for the progress of Ukraine: Constitutional federalism Recognition of linguistic minorities That Ukraine be a non-aligned state
The Kyiv government on 30 March denounced Lavrov's proposals as amounting to "the complete capitulation of Ukraine, its dismemberment, and the destruction of Ukrainian statehood.