To say that Mercator "lies" is to misrepresent the complications of projecting a 3 dimensional object onto a 2 dimensional surface. All projections "lie" in this sense because they're simplifications of reality - that's what a map is.
I don't like that Russia looks like they just took a Mercator projection and shrank to scale. Because of its shape and location, Russia is especially distorted by the Equatorial-centred Mercator.