***ARCHIVE***BRASÍLIA, DF, 11/14/2019 Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Pedro Ladeira/Folhapress)
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) In a lengthy press conference, in which he repeated the Kremlin’s general narrative about the war in Ukraine and the United Statesled conflict with the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a semantic detail attentively his speech this Wednesday (18).
Asked by journalists at the traditional event in Moscow, where he takes stock of the past year, what words would define 2022 for him, the doyen of world diplomacy said that war was the most tragic and victory the most encouraging.
On February 26 last year, two days after the start of hostilities, the Russian government told the country’s media that the use of the terms “war” or “invasion” was banned in favor of the anodic special military operation.
On March 4, two laws criminalized criticism of Vladimir Putin’s actions or the armed forces, potentially leading to 15 years in prison and the closure of dozens of remaining independent vehicles in the country.
The reading of the legal diploma is discretionary. Government allies have used the term on TV news before and have not been penalized. Although the Kremlin uses only the official term, Putin himself misinterpreted the word war in a speech in late 2022, but Lavrov’s thoughtful speech shows the limits of the strategy.
In addition, the Chancellor’s speech reiterated topics that he touched on weekly. Lavrov accused the US of forcing the West into a forced conflict with the Ukrainians, said the relationship between Moscow and Washington “will not be what it was before”, dismissed a peace plan without Western participation as “pointless”. .
In a controversial manner, he again used parallels to the current situation with the fight against National Socialism. Lavrov said that the West was behaving like “Napoleon and Hitler” in relation to the French Emperor and the German dictator invading Russia and that he saw the solution to the “Russian question” in war.
“Jewish question” was the Nazi top euphemism for dealing with the annihilation of Europe’s Jewish population during World War II (193945). Last year Lavrov angered the government of Israel, the Jewish state made possible by the tragedy of the Holocaust, by saying that “Hitler had Jewish blood.” Tel Aviv, which has good relations with Moscow, supports Kyiv.