The news out of Moscow is a bit of non-news: Russia’s top diplomat is still in his job.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov moved to tamp down intense media speculation about a potential reshuffle at the highest echelon of Russian foreign policy. The reason? Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s prominent absence from a Russian Security Council meeting on Wednesday, when President Vladimir Putin floated the possibility of full-scale nuclear testing.
“There is no truth to these reports whatsoever,” Peskov said on a call with reporters Friday. “Lavrov continues to serve as foreign minister, of course.”
To explain why that’s news, a bit of Kremlinology is in order. On Wednesday, the Russian business daily Kommersant – citing “informed sources” – raised eyebrows by reporting that the veteran diplomat “was absent by agreement” from the high-level confab with Putin.
What’s more, observers noted that Lavrov was the only permanent member of the Security Council to miss the meeting. And in parallel, it emerged that the foreign minister would not be leading the Russian delegation to the G20 summit in Johannesburg later this month: Putin on November 4 signed a decree, appointing a more junior official, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Maxim Oreshkin, to head up the delegation.
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