Sergei Lavrov was attending a conference in New Delhi when one of his statements about Ukraine’s role in starting the war sparked laughter in the room.

The statement does not pass. While speaking at a conference on geopolitics in New Delhi, India, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday: “You know, the war that we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using Ukraine…”

However he struggled to finish his sentence, as it sparked lots of laughter in the audience, as shown in the video uploaded by the Indian News Agency. International Asian News (ANI).

“(The war) of course influenced Russian policy, including energy policy,” he continued in spite of everything.

“We will no longer depend on Western partners, we will no longer allow them to blow up gas pipelines,” he said also referring to the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September. for which Western countries and Russia deny responsibility.

Old friendship between Russia and India

India hosted the G20 meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday, attended by Sergei Lavrov.

India, which this year leads the Group of Twenty, has a longstanding friendship with Russia and does not condemn its invasion of Ukraine. New Delhi is also Moscow’s main military customer and has increased its imports of Russian oil over the past year, in opposition to Western countries.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in December criticized India’s increase in purchases of Russian oil since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, deeming this increase in imports “morally unacceptable”, in an interview with Indian channel NDTV.