At an international conference in New Delhi this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defended Russia's position in the war in Ukraine, making the claim that the war was actually imposed on it by the West. Amidst a crowd of top diplomats and academics at the Raisina Dialogue conference, Lavrov made a false claim that was met with criticism and a wave of laughter from the audience.

Lavrov backed this claim by noting that NATO had made commitments not to expand in 1999 and 2010, but failed to keep its promise. He argued that this was accompanied by NATO beefing up Ukraine's military, and that security needs to be indivisible, with no country allowed to harm the security of another. He noted that NATO had failed to provide oil commitments and legal commitments, and that the West had done similar interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.

In response to the criticism this false claim