Russia’s foreign minister gave a conference audience quite a chuckle when he claimed his country is the ‘victim’ in the war against Ukraine.

Sergei Lavrov also bizarrely claimed that Moscow is trying to ‘stop’ the bloody and brutal invasion that has stretched to more than a year.

Speaking at the annual Raisina Dialogue political conference in New Delhi, India, the 72-year-old said: ‘The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using Ukrainian people, of course, influenced the policy of Russia, including energy policy.

‘The energy policy of Russia will be oriented towards reliable (and) credible partners. India and China are certainly among them.’

To groans, giggles and eye-rolls from the audience, Lavrov continued: ‘And the blunt way to describe what changed: we would not anymore rely on any partners in the West.

‘We would not allow them to blow the pipelines again.’

He appeared to be referring to explosions under the Baltic Sea and the rupture of Nord Streams 1 and 2, two major natural gas pipelines.

But he did get a clap or two when asked by an audience member about the ‘double standard’ of Western nations intervening in sovereign countries.

‘Have you been interested in these years (in) what is going on in Iraq, what is going on in Afghanistan?’ he said.

‘(You) believe that the United States has the right to declare a threat to its national interest, any place on earth like they did in Yugoslavia, in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria.

‘And you don’t ask them any questions?’

Lavrov has been touring Asia, Africa and the Middle East for the last year in an attempt to form war-time alliances.

India has cast itself as a neutral ally in the Russia-Ukraine war, trying to keep in the corner of both sides while hundreds of thousands of people die.

The country has rejected Western pressure at the UN to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conflict.

Russia has even become India’s top supplier of cheap oil as Western sanctions partly up the prices of fuel and food.

At Globsec 2022 in June, India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, said: ‘Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s.’

China has similarly staked an apparently impartial stance and has refused to provide weapons to Russia (‘lethal’ weapons for now at least, according to US officials).

But Beijing has continued to have friendly relations with the Kremlin, regularly defending its strong economic ties with Russia at a time when many Western countries are cutting the country off altogether.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs last month released a 12-point paper calling for an end to the war that it never quite referred to as an ‘invasion’ last month.

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, raised an eyebrow at China’s peace proposal.

‘China doesn’t have much credibility,’ she said, ‘because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.’

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