Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a high-level plenary meeting of the International Conference on Eurasian Security, Minsk, October 31, 2024

Colleagues, friends,

Allow me to sincerely thank the organisers of the conference, our Belarusian friends, for an invitation to address this influential forum that has been taking place in Minsk for the second time on the initiative of President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. Today, he opened the discussion in an impressive way. I believe that many ideas voiced by him will help us draft practical recommendations following this conference.

Everyone admits that the establishment of a multipolar world order has become a long-term mainstream trend. Global transformations are a natural and irreversible process, linked with objective changes in the worldwide balance and the consolidation of new, non-Western centres of economic growth and influence. This trend helps make international relations more democratic. They should not be dominated by anyone and the principles of the UN Charter should be observed in their entirety and interlinked nature, rather than selectively. This is of paramount importance.

The sovereign equality of states is a key principle of the UN Charter. This principle alone is the legal foundation of multipolarity. A commitment to this principle also determines our approach towards developing relations with countries of Eurasia, the largest continent boasting the greatest volume of natural resources and posting the most rapid development.

Guided by this logic, President of Russia Vladimir Putin suggested establishing the Greater Eurasian Partnership in 2015 as the broadest integration framework in the interests of expanding and liberalising trade and investment ties, implementing trans-border infrastructure projects, developing the logistic network and harmonising integration processes.

In turn, the Greater Eurasian Partnership will lay a solid economic and material foundation for building a system of equal and indivisible Eurasian security shielding the continent’s countries from common threats and challenges.

Speaking at the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 14, 2024, President Vladimir Putin clearly stated our interest in establishing this system that would consist of interstate agreements and institutions stipulating the primary responsibility of signatory countries for resolving regional conflicts and maintaining stability, while preventing destructive foreign interference.

I would like to emphasise that President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that our perception of the Greater Eurasian Partnership and the system of Eurasian security presupposes their openness for all countries and associations of our continent without exception. This means that no one intends to shut the door to countries of western Eurasia. We will welcome their involvement in processes of common Eurasian cooperation but, certainly, on the basis of equality and provided that they renounce the hostile bloc policy and neo-colonial practices.

This is an absolutely indispensable condition because things had worked out differently for a long time. For example, all schemes without exception(that relied on the Euro-Atlantic security concept aimed to preserve the dominant position of the United States and to contain its rivals, including Russia. NATO played the main role in this context. Everyone realises that NATO has completely subjugated the European Union that had apparently been established by Europeans for the sake of Europeans. The West flagrantly violated the Final (Helsinki) Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and other obligations and virtually privatised guiding OSCE bodies. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has commented on them rather eloquently today. The Organisation has failed to become a mechanism for realising the indivisible security principle that was proclaimed during its inception, and that was repeatedly reaffirmed, including at the 1999 summit in Istanbul and the 2010 summit in Astana. Top-level documents, adopted at those summits, stated expressly that no one would strengthen their own security at the expense of other parties’ security, and that not a single group of countries and not a single organisation had the right to claim dominant positions in the OSCE region. 

All NATO leaders have endorsed this commitment; however, their actions have been decidedly contrary. Despite assurances made to the Soviet leadership and our numerous warnings over the past 20 years, the North Atlantic Alliance has been expanding eastward with undue haste, creating direct military threats to Russia immediately along our borders. It was this aggressive course of action that ultimately precipitated the Ukraine crisis, instigated by the state coup in Kiev in February 2014, orchestrated by Washington and its European allies. This coup brought ultra-nationalists to power, who then declared a campaign to eradicate all things Russian and commenced hostilities against millions of Russians and Russian-speaking people who refused to recognise the illegitimate authority of the putchists.

These are the root causes of the crisis, which Western leaders today prefer to overlook, repeating their rote “return of Ukraine to the 1991 borders.” Their interest lies solely in the territory, not in the fate of the people whose ancestors have resided in Crimea, Donbass, and Novorossiya for centuries, and whom the leaders of the Kiev regime have publicly labelled as “subhumans” and “terrorists,” threatening to let their children decay in cellars. As early as 2021, Vladimir Zelensky demanded that all those feeling an affinity with Russian culture should relocate to Russia.

Since 2014, Ukraine has consistently enacted laws prohibiting the Russian language in education, media, culture, and all other spheres. Recently, Ukrainian parliament banned the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Let me remind you that Article 1 of the UN Charter mandates respect for human rights for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. Yet, the West turns a blind eye to the gross violations of the Charter perpetrated by the Russophobic, racist regime in Kiev, whilst continuing to promote Vladimir Zelensky’s dead-end (one might even say thickhead) “peace formula” that demands Russia’s capitulation. A couple of weeks ago, this individual released an equally delusional “victory plan.” Naturally, neither the “formula,” the “plan,” nor the fanciful notions of Kiev-controlled Ukraine’s membership in NATO or the EU are bringing peace in Europe any closer. Stability in this part of the Eurasian continent will only be achieved with the provision of long-term, reliable security guarantees, as outlined in our initiatives of December 2021, which were rejected by the West, as the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, eloquently reminded us today.

NATO appears unsatisfied with the conflict it has instigated against Russia through the agency of Kiev’s illegitimate administration at the OSCE space. Presently, the United States and its allies endeavour to transform the entirety of Eurasia into a theatre of geopolitical confrontation. The Alliance has declared, in its documents, that threats to it also emanate from the Asia-Pacific Region, including the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and it intends to assert its military dominance not solely in Europe, but also in the East of Eurasia. NATO is infiltrating the region under the guise of Indo-Pacific strategies, thereby undermining the inclusive mechanisms that have been carefully constructed around ASEAN over decades. In exchange, Washington is crafting various “troikas” and “fours,” such as AUKUS and the QUAD, blocs involving the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and other closed configurations with the explicit aim of containing China, isolating Russia, and exerting severe pressure on the DPRK.

The situation in the Middle East portion of Eurasia is unfolding in a still more dramatic manner. The unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the agreements on the Iranian nuclear programme, endorsed by the UN Security Council, alongside Washington’s relentless ambition to monopolise the Arab-Israeli settlement process, has had dire consequences, pushing this strategically pivotal region to the brink of total destabilisation and a major conflict. The Biden administration is obstructing any initiatives to resolve the plight of the Palestinian people. While we condemn every aspect of terrorism, we categorically reject the collective punishment of the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank. The West tends to remain silent on this matter; yet, in one year of Israel’s operation, twice as many Palestinian civilians have been killed compared to the number of civilian casualties on both sides of the Ukrainian conflict over the ten years following the Kiev state coup.

The West has not ceased its destructive activities in other parts of the Eurasian continent either. In the South Caucasus, it persistently offers its services to normalise Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. Having departed Afghanistan after twenty years of occupation, the United States and its allies now seek to “break into” the delicate process of stabilisation in that country and are fabricating pretexts to resume their military presence in the countries of Central Asia.

The aggressive actions of the United States, NATO, and the European Union have heightened the risks of fragmentation across our continent.

The Eurasian security architecture under discussion at this conference is intended to serve as a constructive alternative to these adverse trends, to stabilise the military and political situation on the continent, to ensure its unity and interconnectedness, and to remove threats emanating from the western, Euro-Atlantic direction.

It is obvious to us that there can be no returning to the previous models dominated by the United States with its claim to exclusiveness, in particular because life has not become better wherever it tried to dominate. There should be respect for the new geopolitical realities and international law provisions, with new ideas that are not based on the “might is right” law but on equality and a fair balance of interests. Our vision of a Eurasian architecture harmoniously aligns with the global security initiative advanced by President of China Xi Jinping. One of its key principles is the elimination of the root causes of conflicts everywhere, including the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine and Southeast Asia. This is the earnest of a fair world order and real multilateralism.

I believe that our conference should make use of the increasing experience of formalising political and military confidence-building measures between states throughout our continent in accordance with their requirements and national potential. These measures should be based on life experience and practice.

For example, we worked together with our Belarusian friends to draft a security concept for the Union State and are completing the drafting of a bilateral interstate treaty on security guarantees, which will be aimed at further strengthening our commitments on reliable mutual protection from external threats.

In light of growing tensions in the east of our continent, we are focused on ensuring peace on the Korean Peninsula. As you are aware, seeking to promote bilateral ties, we have signed and ratified a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It should play a major role in ensuring our countries’ security and stabilising the situation in Northeast Asia.

An Agreement on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran will be an important factor of strengthening Russia-Iran relations. The agreement is being prepared for signing in the near future. It will formalise the parties’ commitment to close defence cooperation and interaction in the interests of regional and global peace and security.

Russia-China relations of strategic interaction and comprehensive partnership are extremely important for strengthening stability in Eurasia and ensure the future strengthening of our creative cooperation in all spheres to the benefit of our nations.  These relations are conducive to aligning integration processes on our continent and are a major stabilising factor worldwide in the context of the destructive activities of the collective West, which is trying to maintain its hegemony.

In addition to bilateral efforts to strengthen security, a special role in Eurasia belongs to multilateral associations such as the SCO, ASEAN, the CSTO, the CIS, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the CICA. These forums have a packed agenda on various aspects of security.

The regional players’ growing awareness of responsibility for settling disputes in their part of Eurasia is clearly manifested in the operations of the 3+3 South Caucasus Regional Cooperation Platform, the Moscow Format of Consultations on Afghanistan and a mechanism involving neighbouring countries, and the Astana platform on Syria. I believe that the experience all these platforms have accumulated should be widely used to align all the existing initiatives, including in the context of building a Eurasian security architecture.

In June 2024, the Foreign Minister of Belarus and I signed a joint address to the chief executives of Eurasian multilateral organisations inviting them to join our initiative on drafting a Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century. Our Belarusian friends put forth this idea at the first conference in Minsk a year ago. We actively supported them. We believe that the Eurasian Charter should be formulated as a policy document on the framework principles of Eurasian security architecture based on the norms of the UN Charter in their entirety and interconnectedness, as I pointed out on numerous occasions.

As far as I know, the agenda of this conference includes a separate session for discussing the essential elements of the Eurasian Charter. We hope that it will contribute to the coordination of recommendations on saving our common space from military and any other threats in the interests of billions of people.

Remember that Alexander Lukashenko, who has spoken just now, has invited all of us to the next conference scheduled for 2025.

I would like to wish you success.