Lavrov on the day of the invasion: “Putin trusts only three advisers: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great”

LONDON – At one o’clock in the morning on 24 February last, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov receives a phone call: someone tells him that Vladimir Putin he just ordered to invade Ukraine. The news takes Lavrov completely by surprise. Like most political leaders and experts on international affairs, he too did not expect to the last that the president would actually drag Russia into a war with potentially so serious consequences.