Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is comforting himself ahead of his future war-crimes trial by somehow convincing himself that Russia didn’t attack Ukraine and that blowing up children’s hospitals is actually fine. On Thursday, Lavrov lived up to his reputation as one of the Kremlin’s slimiest operators by spouting a string of breathtaking falsehoods in front of the world’s media. With a straight face, the foreign minister insisted that every piece of footage and every testimonial from Ukraine is somehow made up, and had the gall to say the words: “We are not planning to attack other countries. We didn’t attack Ukraine in the first place.” Asked what was behind Russia’s decision to bomb a maternity and children’s hospital in the city of Mariupol, Lavrov insisted the facility was actually full of Ukrainian “radicals” who had “chased out” all patients. He made that false claim despite the fact that one child died in the bombing.
