Biden Administration Gives Visas to Sanctioned Russian Foreign Minister for U.N. Assembly

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who the administration of leftist President Joe Biden personally sanctioned last year in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, received a visa to enter America for this month’s United Nations General Assembly, Moscow confirmed Tuesday.

Lavrov and a small, unspecified delegation of officials will reportedly represent the regime of strongman Vladimir Putin at the event, held at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The General Assembly officially begins this week but its main event — the “general debate,” which allows the head of government or designated representative of every member country to deliver an address on any topic they choose — will begin on September 20.

World leaders and their representatives rarely face legal hurdles to enter the United States for the General Assembly. The U.N. headquarters are considered legally neutral ground, but officials must travel through the United States to get there from regional airports, requiring legal entry to the country. Despite international human rights law allowing universal jurisdiction to prosecute high-level crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity, a wide variety of human rights criminals — including rogue state leaders like China’s Xi Jinping, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and late socialist Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe — have addressed the forum throughout history.

This year, some members of Congress have expressed concern about allowing representatives of rogue states and human rights violators into the country, including Russia, citing the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Russia’s Tass news agency, which cited the Russian Foreign Ministry, specified only that Lavrov had received a visa, suggesting Putin is not planning to attend the event and that Lavrov will address the forum in his stead.

“Today, visas were issued to Lavrov and some members of his party,” the Foreign Ministry confirmed.

The confirmation followed annoyed grumblings out of Moscow that Washington was allegedly stalling the visa process and that Russian officials should demand the United Nations relocate the event out of New York.

“I am a member of this delegation, there are only five of us, headed by Sergey Lavrov. The delegation was approved by the president. None of us has received a visa yet,” Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Tass on Tuesday, presumably shortly before receiving his visa approval.

“If visas are not issued by the American side to Russia’s delegates, we will press for moving the UN headquarters from New York elsewhere,” he asserted.

The Russian Foreign Ministry had also complained on Tuesday that America was “violating international obligations on issuing visas to delegates from Moscow for a while,” Tass reported. Another Russian Foreign Ministry diplomat had similarly prepared for a campaign to relocate the United Nations’ headquarters, which the country will now, presumably, shelve.

Welcoming Lavrov into America appears to be a dissonant move for the administration of President Joe Biden, which sanctioned Lavrov, Putin, and other top officials in February after Russia expanded its eight-year-old war in Ukraine. While Biden himself has maintained friendly relations with Putin — in contrast with his frosty relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — Biden’s administration has spent billions in supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia and claimed a hard line in support of Kyiv.

In February, the U.S. Treasury Department announced personal sanctions on Lavrov for having “advanced the false narrative that Ukraine is the aggressor” and “aggressively sought to justify Russia’s actions globally.”

“Additionally, as the top diplomat representing Russia on the world stage, Lavrov has helped facilitate Russia’s aggressive actions against sovereign states and enabled Russia to degrade democracy globally,” the Treasury Department asserted.

The sanctions froze any assets Lavrov may have in the United States and banned American citizens from engaging in nay financial transactions with him, but apparently did not prevent him from visiting the country.

At least one Congressperson, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), has publicly opposed allowing a Russian delegation into America for the General Assembly.

“As far as I’m concerned, Russia has forfeited their right to be treated as a responsible member of the international community,” Wagner said last week, following the publication of a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting denial of visas for the Russian delegation.

In a similar move, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) requested last month that the Biden administration deny visas to delegations from Russia’s three allied states in Latin America: Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

“Granting U.S. visas to Maduro, Diaz-Canel, Ortega or any of his representatives, would be a serious mistake and another tremendous failure of this administration in protecting the national security of the United States and to our fight for freedom and democracy in Latin America,” Scott told Breitbart News in a statement regarding his request to the Biden administration. “The United States should be the champion for freedom, but over and over again, when Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua most need the U.S. support, Biden chooses appeasement over the freedom, security and stability of our hemisphere.”

Scott added, “the only reasonable justification to allow these dictators or ANY of their representatives to enter the United States is to arrest them and their thugs once they are here.”

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