Responding to Richard Haass on the April 2023 meeting with Lavrov in New York
The NBC News article on a supposed “back channel” with Russia’s Foreign Ministry established by outgoing chair of the Council of Foreign Relations Richard Haass and several other Council members in April has become the subject of a Bloomberg fact check article. See
Here Haass reconfirms that he and colleagues did meet with Sergei Lavrov then, notwithstanding initial denials by the Russian side that were issued on Russian state television (Sixty Minutes) and were cited by myself in an article on these pages last week.
However, the Bloomberg article makes it clear that this was not a “secret meeting” to discuss an off-ramp for the Ukraine war. It quotes RF Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova who explained that it was the sort of unofficial exchange of views with nongovernmental representatives of a given country that Lavrov makes from time to time on his foreign travels, nothing more.
So do I issue a retraction of what I wrote, or not?
What Haass said does not interest me. What Maria Zakharova said does.
With respect to my article, I see no need for a retraction. What I was reporting is what was said by several panelists and by the host Yevgeny Popov, who is one of the highest ranking journalists in the Russian state news establishment and is also a member of the State Duma. He and the panelists trashed the Foreign Relations Council members in precisely the words I quoted in my essay.
There is always a context for events like this, but people have short memories, if they ever heard of the context I am about to describe:
In the summer of 2008, just before or after the brief Russia-Georgia war, Sergei Lavrov was invited to speak before the Foreign Relations Council in New York. Haass would have presided since he was even back then the chairman. Henry Kissinger was also at the table. Henry started talking about the history of the Caucasus peoples and the background to the conflict. Of course, Henry enjoyed the vocal support of all Council members at the table who deferred to his expertise and genius. Then Lavrov did the unthinkable: he told the whole lot of them that Henry did not know what he was talking about.
At the time I heard a recording of this exchange.
Being the supreme practitioner of diplomacy that he is, since then Lavrov has never publicly indicated that he had less than high respect for the American experts. And the Kremlin has continued to treat Kissinger with public respect and welcomed his occasional visits to Russia.
BUT there was certainly a discrete Russian condescension to the pack of has-been academics in the Council that we saw in the remarks about Haass and his colleagues in the Sixty Minutes program. We heard on air that these experts would have had no right to Lavrov's time, that they were unworthy of him.
And as I said in my essay a week ago, Haass and company were in no way comparable to the backchannels used by a US Congressional delegation in the autumn of 2008 to discuss what became the "reset."
Responding to Richard Haass on the April 2023 meeting with Lavrov in New York
The NBC News article on a supposed “back channel” with Russia’s Foreign Ministry established by outgoing chair of the Council of Foreign Relations Richard Haass and several other Council members in April has become the subject of a Bloomberg fact check article. See
Here Haass reconfirms that he and colleagues did meet with Sergei Lavrov then, notwithstanding initial denials by the Russian side that were issued on Russian state television (Sixty Minutes) and were cited by myself in an article on these pages last week.
However, the Bloomberg article makes it clear that this was not a “secret meeting” to discuss an off-ramp for the Ukraine war. It quotes RF Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova who explained that it was the sort of unofficial exchange of views with nongovernmental representatives of a given country that Lavrov makes from time to time on his foreign travels, nothing more.
So do I issue a retraction of what I wrote, or not?
What Haass said does not interest me. What Maria Zakharova said does.
With respect to my article, I see no need for a retraction. What I was reporting is what was said by several panelists and by the host Yevgeny Popov, who is one of the highest ranking journalists in the Russian state news establishment and is also a member of the State Duma. He and the panelists trashed the Foreign Relations Council members in precisely the words I quoted in my essay.
There is always a context for events like this, but people have short memories, if they ever heard of the context I am about to describe:
In the summer of 2008, just before or after the brief Russia-Georgia war, Sergei Lavrov was invited to speak before the Foreign Relations Council in New York. Haass would have presided since he was even back then the chairman. Henry Kissinger was also at the table. Henry started talking about the history of the Caucasus peoples and the background to the conflict. Of course, Henry enjoyed the vocal support of all Council members at the table who deferred to his expertise and genius. Then Lavrov did the unthinkable: he told the whole lot of them that Henry did not know what he was talking about.
At the time I heard a recording of this exchange.
Being the supreme practitioner of diplomacy that he is, since then Lavrov has never publicly indicated that he had less than high respect for the American experts. And the Kremlin has continued to treat Kissinger with public respect and welcomed his occasional visits to Russia.
BUT there was certainly a discrete Russian condescension to the pack of has-been academics in the Council that we saw in the remarks about Haass and his colleagues in the Sixty Minutes program. We heard on air that these experts would have had no right to Lavrov's time, that they were unworthy of him.
And as I said in my essay a week ago, Haass and company were in no way comparable to the backchannels used by a US Congressional delegation in the autumn of 2008 to discuss what became the "reset."
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Responding to Richard Haass on the April 2023 meeting with Lavrov in New York
The NBC News article on a supposed “back channel” with Russia’s Foreign Ministry established by outgoing chair of the Council of Foreign Relations Richard Haass and several other Council members in April has become the subject of a Bloomberg fact check article. See
Here Haass reconfirms that he and colleagues did meet with Sergei Lavrov then, notwithstanding initial denials by the Russian side that were issued on Russian state television (Sixty Minutes) and were cited by myself in an article on these pages last week.
However, the Bloomberg article makes it clear that this was not a “secret meeting” to discuss an off-ramp for the Ukraine war. It quotes RF Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova who explained that it was the sort of unofficial exchange of views with nongovernmental representatives of a given country that Lavrov makes from time to time on his foreign travels, nothing more.
So do I issue a retraction of what I wrote, or not?
What Haass said does not interest me. What Maria Zakharova said does.
With respect to my article, I see no need for a retraction. What I was reporting is what was said by several panelists and by the host Yevgeny Popov, who is one of the highest ranking journalists in the Russian state news establishment and is also a member of the State Duma. He and the panelists trashed the Foreign Relations Council members in precisely the words I quoted in my essay.
There is always a context for events like this, but people have short memories, if they ever heard of the context I am about to describe:
In the summer of 2008, just before or after the brief Russia-Georgia war, Sergei Lavrov was invited to speak before the Foreign Relations Council in New York. Haass would have presided since he was even back then the chairman. Henry Kissinger was also at the table. Henry started talking about the history of the Caucasus peoples and the background to the conflict. Of course, Henry enjoyed the vocal support of all Council members at the table who deferred to his expertise and genius. Then Lavrov did the unthinkable: he told the whole lot of them that Henry did not know what he was talking about.
At the time I heard a recording of this exchange.
Being the supreme practitioner of diplomacy that he is, since then Lavrov has never publicly indicated that he had less than high respect for the American experts. And the Kremlin has continued to treat Kissinger with public respect and welcomed his occasional visits to Russia.
BUT there was certainly a discrete Russian condescension to the pack of has-been academics in the Council that we saw in the remarks about Haass and his colleagues in the Sixty Minutes program. We heard on air that these experts would have had no right to Lavrov's time, that they were unworthy of him.
And as I said in my essay a week ago, Haass and company were in no way comparable to the backchannels used by a US Congressional delegation in the autumn of 2008 to discuss what became the "reset."
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023