Daily Inspiration Quote by Igor Ivanov

Ivanov’s sentence is built to sound like a door quietly locking. “We believe” signals diplomacy’s favorite shield: the claim is firm, but it’s framed as a position rather than an ultimatum, leaving room for bargaining while still planting a flag. The real knife is in the phrasing “especially with reference to previous resolutions.” That’s a direct rebuttal to the core American and British argument in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion: that earlier UN resolutions supplied continuing authority to use force. Ivanov is not merely objecting to war; he’s trying to strip the war of its most respectable costume.

The line “has no grounds, including legal grounds” is doing double duty. “No grounds” is broad enough to cover morality, prudence, and credibility; “including legal” narrows the fight to a forum where Russia had leverage: the Security Council, where it held veto power and a claim to great-power co-authorship of the rules. This is less about pacifism than jurisdiction. Ivanov is defending the idea that legitimacy flows through institutions where Russia is structurally central, not through coalitions that can route around Moscow.

Context sharpens the intent: a post-Cold War Russia seeking to reassert itself as a co-equal arbiter, wary of a US doctrine of preemption, and conscious that “regime change” could become a precedent aimed elsewhere. The subtext is a warning: bypass the UN here, and you normalize a world where power writes retroactive law.