His impasto face where any hint of a smile is prohibited seems straight out of Cold War images: a sort of resurrection of Brezhnevism, like a creature escaped from a Jurassic Park subtitled in Cyrillic. Sergei Lavrov, 71, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for nearly eighteen years, never - at least publicly - shows the slightest charm. This is good because his boss Vladimir Putin does not ask him to seduce. On the contrary, his marble face with dark eyes framed by square frameless glasses must inspire awe. The head of Russian diplomacy does not seek compromise. Filled with demands, ultimatums and accusations, his speech calls on the vocabulary of his distant Soviet predecessors Molotov or Gromyko.
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