Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at a meeting of Heads of Security Agencies and Intelligence Services of CIS Member States, Moscow, November 26, 2024

Mr Naryshkin,

Colleagues, 

I appreciate the invitation to attend your annual event this time again. I am honoured, following the tradition, to have the opportunity to speak at the opening of this meeting.

The Russian Federation attributes high importance to deepening integration within the framework of the CIS, particularly concerning a wide range of regional security issues. We welcome the strengthening of the collective efforts to respond effectively and promptly to both existing and emerging challenges and threats. 

In this context, meetings of the security agency and intelligence service leaders from the CIS member states provide a venue for professional and candid discussions of pressing issues, which is a way to promote mutual trust and to identify concrete decisions concerning joint actions. 

The message from President Vladimir Putin, which Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin just read, brings into focus the key point which is, considering existing circumstances, your exchange of views and assessments is particularly important.

I’m not going to discuss in detail the fact that the international situation remains extremely tense and continues to worsen courtesy of our Western colleagues. The main reason includes their persistent attempts to keep the remains of their former dominance. To this end, the collective West is stoking internal conflicts and hotbeds of tension and resorts to various unsavory geopolitical tactics, ranging from orchestrating large-scale information wars to inciting “colour revolutions,” which we are witnessing in Georgia. 

The neo-Nazi Kiev regime employs openly terrorist methods, closely collaborates with international terrorist groups and transnational criminal networks in order to transfer foreign mercenaries to fight against Russia, among other things, and to train militants to fight against legitimate governments in Africa and Syria. 

I am confident that the security agencies and intelligence services of our respective countries can and should respond to such threats promptly and decisively. In this sense, as I earlier mentioned, your meeting is of particular importance. 

As you are aware, Russia is chairing the CIS this year. We are implementing the chairmanship concept which was approved by your countries, which places great emphasis on matters of security and law enforcement. In line with the goals outlined in it, the CIS Council of Foreign Ministers adopted a statement on October 7 regarding principles of cooperation in ensuring security in Eurasia. Amid the efforts to form a new and fairer international order, this statement lays a solid foundation for continued work towards this end. The statement comprises a number of important provisions on adapting Eurasian security interaction architecture to multipolar realities, settling and preventing regional conflicts by Eurasian states themselves, addressing the root causes of fundamental differences between the countries that underlie particular crises, and developing a mutual collective security guarantee net. 

We acknowledge the substantial contributions of our partners to joint CIS projects and programmes in areas such as combatting terrorism, extremism, transnational crime, illicit drug and arms trafficking, and money laundering. 

Strengthening the CIS external borders remains an urgent task, particularly amid ongoing threats emanating from Afghanistan. 

I would like to highlight the adoption, on October 8, by the CIS Heads of State Council, of a 2025–2027 programme for cooperation in deradicalisation which was initiated by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan. This programme aims to implement a consolidated policy to prevent the spread and fuelling of terrorist and extremist ideologies, and calls for close collaboration with allies to successfully implement this document and achieve its goals at the UN and other multilateral platforms. 

Priority areas of sector-specific cooperation include monitoring migration flows and establishing cooperation in this area in order to suppress illegal migration and reliably protect the rights of honest labour migrant who are using legal channels of employment created between our countries for this purpose.

Expanding information exchange on these matters is vital to our efforts to ensure the security and stability of each CIS member state. 

We believe that the effectiveness of our work gets significantly better when CIS efforts are integrated with the efforts of other regional organisations, primarily, the SCO and the CSTO, which also operate through relevant mechanisms. 

The role of the Union State of Belarus and Russia in ensuring security in our shared region has increased substantially. It is crucial to adhere to the “regional solutions to regional problems” principle, which is taking on increasingly universal nature.

A growing number of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are supportive of these particular approaches rather than seeing former colonial powers dictate how these nations should go about resolving their disputes the way they did back in the day, and even attempting to enforce such measures through the UN Security Council. 

For Eurasia, this means independent security arrangements by the continent’s nations without external interference, which, in most cases, creates tensions and new irritants. 

In addition to the above entities such as the SCO, the CSTO, the Union State, and the CIS, we have partners such as the GCC and Central Asia Plus mechanisms, including Central Asia-Russia, Central Asia-China, and Central Asia-India mechanisms. Collectively, these mechanisms will allow us to create a Eurasian security architecture that is not imposed on us from above artificially, but is developed through the harmonious integration of existing capabilities of these organisations. 

Notably, the ongoing transformation of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia into an intergovernmental organisation holds significant potential.

We believe that CICA can contribute to a Eurasian approach to security that is open to all countries and associations on the continent.

NATO, however, approaches these matters differently. Their previously bashful rhetoric about NATO being a “defensive alliance” has already been refuted by previous Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He said they defend the territories of their member countries, but the threat to these territories now comes from the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the Asia-Pacific region. That makes the North Atlantic Alliance responsible for security in the Asia-Pacific as well, meaning that Euro-Atlantic security and security in Asia and the Pacific are indivisible. This is a direct quote which later made it into a resolution of one of the Alliance's summits.

More recently, Chair of NATO’s Military Committee Rob Bauer announced that this was no longer enough, and in order to meet the goals of NATO member states’ protection and defence, it is necessary to preemptively hit targets in the Russian Federation that NATO believes could pose a threat to NATO member states. I believe this does not need my comment. Such statements discard diplomatic decorum and expose NATO’s true intentions.

I would like to close by re-assuring everyone in this audience of the Foreign Ministry’s unwavering commitment to cooperating closely with our colleagues in the CIS countries in a substantive and result-oriented manner in order to counter numerous challenges to our common security and to coordinate the necessary efforts within the Commonwealth and in the other formats that I mentioned earlier.

I have no doubt whatsoever that today's meeting will be constructive and productive, and the agreements reached during it will contribute to strengthening stability in the Eurasian space.