Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s media statement following his meeting with President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Minsk, June 25, 2024

Good afternoon,

As part of my official visit to the Republic of Belarus, I had a lengthy meeting with President Alexander Lukashenko. The discussion focused on our interaction on foreign policy issues.

We regularly adopt joint programmes regarding foreign policy. We considered progress on the current programme, which is being implemented from 2024 to 2026. Focusing most of our foreign policy efforts to support and facilitate Russia-Belarus integration is of particular importance at the current stage of the Union State development. Integration within the Union State is gaining momentum and specific content, such as the 28 Union programmes and 31 priority areas, with specific objectives already in the hundreds. The foreign policy component of our alliance is growing; it is going to have increasingly more applied significance, providing guidance for our activities in the international arena to promote the most effective development of integration as part of the union.

We noted our cooperation experiences at the UN and the OSCE, even though the latter has completely degenerated and turned to essentially serving the interests of the West. We agreed on the need for a more effective counteraction to relentless attempts to revise or discard every principle underpinning the OSCE’s activities since the Helsinki Final Act. This organisation is the embodiment of a security concept developed as the Euro-Atlantic architecture, which combines part of Europe (and consequently part of Eurasia) with the Euro-Atlantic participation (the United States and Canada). The OSCE has failed to become an organisation that ensures the interests of the majority of its members. In fact, it has turned into a tool used by those who are manipulating European processes from across the ocean and have actually subordinated Europe to their interests in recent years, removing the European Union as their economic competition.

The Republic of Belarus and Russia insist that [Eurasian] security issues be primarily considered by the countries of our common continent, without outside interference. In October 2023, Minsk hosted the High-level International Conference Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects in a Transforming World. The conference, held at President Lukashenko’s initiative, was a success, and even attracted a few participants from NATO and EU countries. Peter Szijjarto, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, attended the event.

We strongly support our Belarusian friends’ intention to make this conference a regular event. The second conference on Eurasian security will be held in late October or early November 2024; we discussed preparations for it. We will definitely participate in it, and will contribute some specific content on ways to further advance the processes that stem from reality in Eurasia.

There are numerous sub-regional and regional organisations in Eurasia. One of them is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which is going to be enriched with a new full member, the Republic of Belarus. This will happen at the SCO summit in Astana on July 3-4. There are also the CSTO, CIS, ASEAN and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf. Kazakhstan’s initiative to turn the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia into a full-fledged organisation is also widely known. Yesterday, Foreign Minister of Belarus Sergey Aleinik and I signed an appeal to all these organisations to join the effort to elaborate the Eurasian security concept. It should balance the interests of all countries on the continent and will be open to every state located here without exception.

This was the agenda that we covered with President Lukashenko today; we have received his support. The initiative to elaborate this security concept also has President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s support and was among the issues he discussed in his remarks at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 14.

We shall report to President Vladimir Putin on the results of our official visit to the Republic of Belarus and continue to work to implement the agreements concluded by our leaders.