Russia’s Lavrov met with hoots

MUNICH – Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov sparked derisive laughter and indignation among the audience at the Munich Security Conference by defending Moscow’s actions in the Ukraine conflict and accusing the West of fomenting unrest in the crisis. In a testy question-and-answer session following his February 7 speech at the conference, Mr. Lavrov elicited scattered howls from an audience that included Western officials by claiming that Ukraine’s Crimea territory willingly joined Russia in line with the United Nations Charter. “I guess it’s funny. I also found many things [said here] funny as well, but I controlled myself,” Mr. Lavrov, who spoke in Russian throughout, said in response to the laughter. Canada’s delegation to NATO wrote on its Twitter feed that Mr. Lavrov’s comments were a “sad attempt to dress up Russia’s grab of Crimea with U.N. language.” Mr. Lavrov was also subjected to scorn after expressing support for the principles of territorial integrity and non-intervention spelled out in the Helsinki Final Act, a treaty signed in 1975 by 35 states, including the Soviet Union. The Helsinki principles “were long ago torn up by the actions of the United States and its allies in Yugoslavia, which they bombed, in Iraq, in Libya, and by expanding NATO eastward and creating new dividing lines,” Mr. Lavrov said. NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who was in the audience, accused the Russian foreign affairs minister of hypocrisy. “Russia violates all Helsinki principles, yet FM Lavrov calls for reaffirming them. Interesting logic,” Mr. Vershbow tweeted. (RFE/RL)