NEW YORK — By the time Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly this week, he and his country had already lost much of the audience.

Throughout the annual gathering, world leader after world leader had expressed deep discomfort if not outright condemnation over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Even some countries that have stayed friendly with the Kremlin called for a cease-fire or other ways to end the crisis. Few offered words of comfort to Russia. And Russian President Vladimir Putin, who did not attend LUNGA, did himself no favours when he announced mid-week that he was escalating the battle and might even use nuclear weapons.

The growing global unhappiness with Russia was hard to miss. A senior U.S. diplomat told POLITICO that some foreign officials turned down Russian invitations to meet on the LUNGA sidelines this past week, given the optics. “Their dance card wasn’t very full,” the diplomat said.

But for now, it’s more a shift in tone than anything tangible that could add pressure to the Kremlin economically or militarily — many countries still rely on Russia for oil and gas supplies. Lavrov, for one, seemed to realize this, and so the veteran diplomat did not hold back in his speech Saturday.

He insisted that Moscow’s war was just, and that Russia was defending itself and Ukraine-based Russian speakers against a neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv — a claim not based in reality. He blamed U.S. and European sanctions for rising food insecurity — an allegation the West denies — not, for instance, Russia’s efforts to block Ukrainian grain shipments. Not only that, but he also cast the expansion of NATO as a threat the Kremlin could not ignore.