One clear memory I do have, though, is the rapturous terms in which many of my best friends at the institute would speak of Seryozha — themselves smart and decent people, many of whom I continue to consider friends decades after graduating. Indeed, Lavrov had a very good reputation, he was the life and soul of the party, the kind of guy who would get out his guitar and sing at parties, while still gladly spending his summer holidays fulfilling the expectations of the Soviet authorities by working in one of the student construction brigades that were an inevitable part of life for ambitious students in the USSR.

A natural leader, Lavrov seemed to be the social centre of gravity for many of his peers in the institute. Despite the strictures of the times — this was just a few years after Soviet tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring, and a time when the persecution of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, among others, was never far from people’s minds — he felt no need to hide his essentially freedom-loving character.

This aspect of his personality set him apart from many of his peers, nearly all of whom were painstakingly engaged in building their brilliant careers and were therefore reluctant to take even a step out of line, being content instead to parrot all kinds of propagandistic drivel to justify the actions of the Soviet authorities. Nevertheless, despite unquestionably being part of the institute’s free-thinkers, he was also a naturally cautious person.

After the institute our paths diverged, of course, and he went off to the Foreign Ministry and was soon posted to Sri Lanka where he worked at the Soviet Embassy in Colombo. Inevitably, he had no choice but to join the Communist Party before he was granted such a career leap, though, as with most MGIMO students, it’s safe to say he did so purely for his own professional advancement rather than for his own personal belief in communist ideals.

This duplicitous step was precisely where Lavrov began his journey into bad faith, which, if not nipped in the bud, can lead to the wholesale degeneracy of compromise that we see before us today.

I heard nothing about Lavrov for many years after that as Mikhail Gorbachev’s twin policies of glasnost and perestroika in the mid-1980s steadily led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Once the USSR was consigned to history, however, Lavrov suddenly came back into view, rising rapidly through the ranks of government, promoted first to deputy foreign minister, then to being Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, and then finally, in 2004, as Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister, a job he’s now held for over two decades.

I’ll make no secret of the fact that I wasn’t particularly interested in Lavrov’s career path in those days, though I was surprised that somebody I remember as being such a broad-minded, pleasant and cultured young man appeared content to remain in his post as foreign minister after Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, then after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and, above all, after the start of the “big” war with Ukraine in 2022.

Not only did he acquiesce to Putin’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy, he supported it and accepted an increasingly heavy burden of responsibility in its name. Why would an intelligent, cultured, broad-minded person find it acceptable to sacrifice himself in such a way?

Unfortunately, such disingenuity is not something peculiar to Sergey Lavrov, it’s a trait that can commonly be seen in those who believe that trading in one’s conscience, personality and ideals for benefits as illusory as money, power and fame represents a good deal.

I am very sorry that Seryozha Lavrov chose the path he did and that he has followed it so cynically almost to the end. Attempting to reconcile the young Lavrov with the person who in his recent interview with Tucker Carlson accused the German doctors who saved Alexey Navalny’s life of being complicit in his murder is almost impossible.

However, it’s important to be clear: Lavrov has not lost his mind. No amount of deceit, no amount of lies makes a person stupid, only unhappy. Indeed, he knows perfectly well what he’s doing, which makes the whole affair even more tragic.

No matter how alien to me the politics of Putin and his entourage are, no matter how much I think their actions are disgusting, wrong and criminal, I could understand them if Putin and his entourage sincerely believed in what they claimed.

I know a couple of MGIMO students who went on to work at the Foreign Ministry, and they are true believers who think that Sergey Lavrov and his ferocious spokesperson Maria Zakharova are great people. Yes, such naive people really do exist. Were Lavrov genuinely devoted to the philosophy of the so-called “Russian world”, and sincerely believed that Russia and Ukraine are one country, that would be one thing.

Yes, I categorically disagree with such views, but service to a genuinely held principle, however abhorrent, elevates people in some way. However, knowing the size of Lavrov’s intellect, I can confidently say that his real opinions are quite different, and that he simply pushes narratives he himself knows to be false. That’s perhaps the saddest thing of all — after all, in almost any situation, you can always walk away.

When your professional activities go against your principles, your principles should always win out. At least that’s the way anyone half decent would act. That’s something my father taught me, and it’s something I’ve always tried to do in life. The fact that Lavrov did the opposite and chose to continue in his post while betraying his conscience is his greatest misfortune, and I am certain that the fact he chose such a path through life haunts him on some level.

However, as long as a man lives, he has the opportunity to change his fate. I would be glad if he could, but with Lavrov’s every false step it becomes more and more difficult.