No one was more valiant than the Russians!
Lavrov’s statement is essentially correct. I don’t know about “valiant” but they killed far more nazis than anyone else until the Allied invasion of North Africa and Italy in 1943. The fact that Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler before hitlers invasion of Poland, then scooped up chunks of Poland and tried to seize Finland and the Baltic countries before hitler turned on him is often forgotten. Stalin also had no problem feeding soviet troops and civilians into the nazi grinder without regret. However it was proven to be necessary to kill nazis, but valiant had nothing to do with it.