(Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fronting Russia’s delegation to the Group of 20 (G20) international summit on the Indonesian island of Bali, after Russian officials said President Vladimir Putin was unable to attend.
Lavrov, 72, is the longest-serving foreign minister since the fall of the Soviet Union, having been in the post since 2004.
A graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he worked as a Soviet diplomat in Sri Lanka during the Cold War before representing Russia at the United Nations in the 1990s.
Seen as a technocrat and effective orator, Lavrov has presided over a steady cooling of relations with the West since Putin came to power in 2000.
In 2009, he joined then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a ceremony intended to “reset” relations between Moscow and Washington, while Putin was serving as prime minister during his close ally Dmitry Medvedev’s four-year presidency.
But over the last decade, like most senior Russian officials, Lavrov has adopted an increasingly hawkish position, supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and railing against what he and Putin have called the West’s attempts to constrain Russia and dominate global affairs.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
