Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shows once again why he’s an all-star diplomat

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is an experienced journalist whisperer—giving him all the skills he needs to subdue feral members of the press.

Sometimes these wild beasts ask questions so profoundly mindless that you can actually feel your brain-cells being kidnapped by ISIS and lowered into a shark tank.

Confronted by one of the most pointless, mind-numbing questions ever asked (by a RT reporter, unfortunately), Sergey Lavrov used the opportunity to remind the world that Russia isn’t a nation on its knees begging for approval—but a normal country full of normal people with sharp wits and good humor:

Q: In terms of relations with other countries, billions of people are going to be watching the World Cup—how big a chance is this to promote itself in a positive way?

Lavrov: It depends on how we play and how we receive our guests. I’m sure we will be very hospitable. As for the quality of the game, of the play of the Russian team, I cannot predict—they are very unpredictable guys.

We don’t want to oversell this seemingly insignificant exchange—but this really is Lavrov at his best.

Lavrov posses an uncanny ability of taking predictable, robotic questions and flipping them into little nuggets of humor and humanity.

The reporter was of course expecting a laundry list of how exceptional Russia will be in every way during the 2018 World Cup. Instead, Lavrov gave an honest, humorous and human answer.

We often read in Respected Western Newspapers about how Russia lives in an alternate reality. Seems like a pretty grounded, healthy and good-humored reality to us.

(P.S. — for those who didn’t pick up on Lavrov’s joke … Russia’s national football team is, for lack of a better word, “bad”.)