I emailed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward regarding his new book War:
Dear Bob,
You have misquoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on page 88 of your new book, and significantly altered the meaning of his statement.
Lavrov’s full quote was: “Those who mechanically repeat the points made in Bucharest and insist that ‘third countries’ have no right to express their position on the issue of NATO enlargement are playing with fire. I am convinced that they cannot be unaware of this.” Statement by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, at the Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, December 2, 2021.
Here is your version from page 88 of War, to compare to the original above: “‘Third countries’ — meaning, the United States — ‘have no right to express their position on the issue of NATO enlargement and are playing with fire,’ Lavrov warned, ‘I am convinced that they cannot be aware of this.’”
You omitted everything before “third countries,” and failed to put brackets around his capital T, to indicate it was not truly the beginning of the sentence, importantly losing the context that he was discussing others: “Those who … repeat and insist that,” at the beginning. You also added “— meaning, the United States —” after “third countries,” when Lavrov clearly meant Russia, and added the word “and” after “enlargement” to make it at least make sense grammatically, if in no other way. But you did not put brackets around the and as though you are sure that was what he meant to say. Perhaps because you knew that he did not?
The sentence as reproduced in your book makes no sense at all in English without the addition of the word “and.”
And it makes no sense whatsoever in context: You would have us accept that the Russian foreign minister believes and said out loud that the United States of America is a “third country” which has “no right” to an opinion on the size of its own military alliance, only he does, and that the US is “playing with fire” by having an opinion, rather than by disregarding Russia’s — really?
Do you have any comment? Thanks!
Best,
Scott Horton