Russian minister’s claim Ukraine war ‘launched against us’ met with laughter

Comments by Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, were met with laughter at an international conference in India, when he said that the Ukraine war had been "launched against" his home country.

Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, a politics and economics event in Delhi, Lavrov also claimed that Russia was trying to stop the war.

"The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using Ukrainian people, of course, influenced the policy of Russia, including energy policy," he said, briefly stumbling over his words as people in the audience laughed.

Lavrov continued: "And the blunt way to describe what changed: we would not any more rely on any partners in the west. We would not allow them to blow the pipelines again," in a reference to the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea in September.

Contrary to Lavrov's claim, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, launched an invasion of Ukraine on 24 February last year, in what he called a "special military operation".

The audience did not laugh at everything Lavrov had to say, however. Asked about the "double standard" of western military intervention, the audience applauded his response.

"Have you been interested in these years in what is going on in Iraq, what is going on in Afghanistan? Have you been asking the United States and Nato whether they are certain of what they are doing?" he asked.

The Raisina Dialogue conference comes after a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Delhi, during which the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told Lavrov that the US would not back down in its support for Ukraine.

India, which has longstanding economic and military links to Russia, has remained neutral on the topic of the Ukraine war.

It has abstained from voting in UN resolutions condemning Russia's invasion and has increased its imports of Russian oil after the introduction of western sanctions against Moscow.