Russian minister: ‘Who are you to f****** lecture me?’
ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images I somehow missed this story about how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov allegedly swore a blue streak in a recent phone conversation with David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, on the subject of South Ossetia. According to the Telegraph, Lavrov berated his boyish British counterpart, asking at one point, “Who are you ...
ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images
I somehow missed this story about how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov allegedly swore a blue streak in a recent phone conversation with David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, on the subject of South Ossetia.
According to the Telegraph, Lavrov berated his boyish British counterpart, asking at one point, “Who are you to f—— lecture me?” The Daily Mail has it as “Who the f— are you to lecture me?” and quotes a Whitehall source saying, “It was effing this and effing that. It was not what you would call diplomatic language. It was rather shocking.”
The Russian foreign minister vehemently denied the report and said he was quoting a European diplomat referring to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, according to Kommersant:
‘F—— lunatic’ were the words that Lavrov quoted in an attempt to convince his British counterpart that it had been Saakashvili that had started the war for South Ossetia.
Lavrov promised that a transcript of the conversation would be posted on the ministry’s Web site, but it has yet to materialize.
Blake Hounshell is a former managing editor of Foreign Policy.
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