There is an iconic Soviet children’s cartoon series “The Adventures of Cat Leopold”, where a kind, friendly cat is attempting to teach two misbehaving and downright evil mice to behave and to live in peace. “Guys, let’s live in friendship” is the cue of Cat Leopold. Whatever he tries to do to teach those mice – good example, showing them the errors of their ways, nothing helps. They are soon back to their old ways of making Leopold’s life a living hell. More often than not the mice fall victim of their own traps and provocations, thus illustrating the Russian proverb: “Don’t dig a hole for someone – you’ll end up falling into it yourself”.

In one episode, the ever-kind and balanced Leopold gets prescribed a medicine, “Wilderine”, to make him act more like a raging leopard. That seems to get the mice’s attention for awhile. Yet, at the end of the episode Leopold is back to his kind ways, enticing the mice to “live in friendship”.

Here is the episode in question: “The Revenge of Cat Leopold”

And here is a collection of several other Cat Leopold cartoons:

Why am I writing this? Because Soviet and now Russian actions, trying to make the West behave in a peaceful and well-mannered way are akin to Leopold’s attempts to make the mice behave.

And I am afraid that today’s excellent speech by the Russian FM Lavrov at UNGA is yet another such attempt, falling on deaf ears.

UPDATE 2023: In a bout of enforcing the freedom of speech and democracy, in 2022 YouTube removed the RT channel, while the West blocked the RT site. The link below is update to an uncensored mirror of RT.

Drop the diktats, try diplomacy: Major takeaways from Lavrov’s UN speech

“But history didn’t teach us anything,” Lavrov said, adding that allegations “based on the notorious ‘highly likely’ thing are sufficient for some Western counterparts to pin the blame on anyone.”

“We do remember how often these unfounded claims were used to justify interventions and ignite wars, such the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, 2003 invasion of Iraq and 2011 intervention in Libya.”

“Colonial-era diktat and coercion should be sent into the archive or the dustbin of history.”

Moscow believes constructive dialogue can meet any challenges that arise in world affairs, according to Lavrov.

“If you have any questions or claims to anyone, then sit down and talk, show facts, listen to your counterpart’s arguments, try to balance your interests.”