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'Sir Gays at the Foreign Office': How Johnson described meeting Lavrov in Moscow
In 2017, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met with Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. The talks ended inconclusively, but Lavrov came away with the impression that he was “the Gromyko of our time,” Johnson wrote in his memoirs.
The former British Prime Minister (2019–2022) spoke about this in his memoirs, Unleashed, about his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow in 2017. Johnson then became head of the Foreign Office, which was the first visit to Russia by a British Foreign Secretary in five years.
The trip had been delayed for a long time. Lavrov invited Johnson to Moscow in December 2016. The visit was planned but cancelled by London in April 2017 due to Moscow’s continued support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As a result, Johnson visited Russia in December 2017 and, according to him, the situation in Syria was to be one of the main topics of the meeting. “My visit is intended to show that we cannot just sit back and complain about each other. We must seek and find areas where we can strengthen our cooperation,” Johnson said at a joint press conference with Lavrov at the time.
In his memoirs, published on October 10 (the text was verified by RBC), Johnson recalls that he went to Moscow "without much confidence that anything good would come of it," but with all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Britain was the only country that did not have a permanent dialogue with Russia. He described Lavrov as follows: "Tall, half-Armenian, dark-haired, smoking a cigarette, with strange, satisfied, narrowed eyes." "He is the longest-serving Russian foreign minister since the Tsar, a modern-day Gromyko," Johnson said of his political personality. "He is the tiresome personification of Russian foreign policy, full of all sorts of sophistry, evasions and lies."
"I am not Lord Gay," Sergei said, shaking hands. According to Johnson, the Russian minister began the meeting by saying: "Sir Gay is in the Foreign Office." The memoirist writes that the "banal bilateral meeting" was followed by "a literally hot dinner" at which Lavrov made him "sit in front of a blazing fire so hot I was sweating." Face, "Taunts gay classmates as if he were the headmaster of a Victorian school."
“Nothing came of the meeting. We didn’t reach agreement on Syria or Ukraine. When I mentioned [Alexander] Litvinenko, he crossed himself and laughed,” Johnson recalls. He says Lavrov responded that “the Jews killed Jesus,” but “that doesn’t mean we should give up on relations with Israel.” “The basic fact is that Russia is a very different place than it was 20 years ago. It’s no longer just a defeated Cold War power,” Johnson concludes.
Sergey Lavrov said at the meeting that relations between Moscow and London were at a "very low point" and that Russia could not take the lead. "To be honest, I do not remember any aggressive actions on the part of Russia against Great Britain. We have not accused London of anything. "Rather, we heard accusations - even very offensive ones - that we support the "criminal" regime in Syria, that we are occupiers and occupiers, that we annex other people's territories," he said at a press conference. He called for a "concrete examination of the facts" and expressed hope that "this will help normalize our relations. As for Boris, I trust him so much that I am ready to call him Boris, not Boris." Lavrov concluded:
Boris Johnson was born in New York, USA, in 1964. He graduated from Oxford University. Before his political career, he was a journalist, writing for The Times, The Daily Telegraph and was the editor-in-chief of the political weekly The Spectator. In 2001, he was elected to the House of Commons, and in 2008 he became Mayor of London, which he held until 2016. From 2016 to 2018, he served as the UK Foreign Secretary, leading negotiations on Britain's exit from the European Union. He is known for his harsh statements about Russia. For example, he compared the 2018 FIFA World Cup to the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. In 2019, he became the leader of the Conservative Party and then Prime Minister. In the summer of 2022, he announced his resignation. Since then, he has not held any official position.