Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, called out Western hypocrisy when criticizing Moscow’s occupation of the Donbas while giving a stamp of approval for Israel’s land grab in the Golan Heights.

Lavrov addressed reporters after his speech at the UN and was asked about earlier comments made by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the UN. She said it is incumbent on the world to protect territorial integrity which is “enshrined” in the world body’s charter. 

The Jerusalem Post reported that she was asked about the Golan Heights, which was seized by Israel from Syria after the Six-Day War in 1967, and she said the U.S. did not change its recognition of Israel’s sovereignty there.

Lavrov noted that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN in 2021 that “the Golan is very important to Israel’s security.”

The paper noted that Blinken raised concerns about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian-backed militia groups.

This position is not isolated in the Biden administration. 

Former President Donald Trump revised U.S. policy on the matter in 2019 to officially recognize the Golan as belonging to Israel. The UN Security Council said in 1981 that Israel’s control over the Golan Heights “is null and void and without international legal effect.”

Lavrov told reporters that if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in power in Ukraine, and NATO continues its presence in the country, control over the Donbas is of “real importance to Russia’s security.” 

He repeated what Blinken told CNN in reference to Israel’s occupation: “Legal questions are something else. And over time, if the situation were to change in Ukraine, that’s something we’d look at. But we are nowhere near that.”

Lavrov said, “And that’s the answer to your question.”

TRENDPOST: Hypocrisy, it’s the American way. (See “DUH-MOCK-RACY: ISRAEL HOLDING OVER 1,200 DETAINEES—MAINLY PALESTINIANS—WHO HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED” 8 Aug 2023, “ISRAEL’S APARTHEID STATE NOT AN APARTHEID DECLARES WASHINGTON” 1 Aug 2023, “IT’S PAST TIME TO BE HONEST ABOUT ISRAEL” 25 Jul 2023, and “UN: OK FOR ISRAEL TO KILL PALESTINIAN CHILDREN, BUT SHAMES RUSSIA FOR KILLING CHILDREN IN UKRAINE” 27 Jun 2023.)

Thomas-Greenfield told reporters that it was her priority during this year’s General Assembly to “uphold the principles enshrined in the UN Charter, including respect for the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all member states.”

She really meant that the priority is to make sure Israel remains above reproach and that the U.S. gets to design the world as it sees fit. 

This is not the first time Lavrov called out the U.S. for its blatant hypocrisy. 

In March, Lavrov said Washington’s dismay over the war dead in Ukraine is rich coming from a country that itself conducted military interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Kosovo.

“If you think that the United States has the right to declare any country in the world a threat to its national interests, the way it did with Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria—ten thousand kilometers away across the Atlantic Ocean, then you would not be asking any questions,” he said, according to Russia’s TASS. “Whereas Russia had issued warnings for more than 10 years (and not just once on the eve of the attack, as was the case in Iraq and other places): ‘Guys, what you are doing is going to end badly.’ We are not talking about some faraway place, but right on our borders, in territories where Russians have lived for centuries. In a word, if this is not what you call a double standard, then I am not foreign minister.”