Press release on the 17th East Asia Summit

On November 13, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the 17th East Asia Summit (EAS) in Phnom Penh.   

During an exchange of views on the key international and regional problems, the Russian side underscored Russia’s consistent line on strengthening the multipolar world order and establishing positive, practice-oriented cooperation between countries in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) aimed at counteracting the growing threats to its stable and progressive development, including in the context of the West-provoked global economic crisis involving dire consequences in the food and energy spheres.

A particular emphasis was placed on the risks related to NATO’s “globalisation” and the West’s policy to militarise the APR, including by way of establishing a military and technological infrastructure on the AUKUS platform (USA-UK-Australia) and aligning it with the military potential of the Euro-Atlantic Region. The ASEAN partners were invited to pay attention to the “double-bottomed” Indo-Pacific projects launched from the bloc platforms, projects aimed at containment and counteraction rather than at a maximally broad cooperation.   

Russia expressed support for ASEAN’s efforts to preserve its unity and maintain a multipolar, stable architecture of interstate relations in the APR, based on the principles of mutual respect and equality and involving a commitment to observe the balance of interests of all participants in the regional process.   

Steps were taken as part of the programme of summit events sponsored by the Ten-Nation Association to further strengthen ties between ASEAN and other unions with a positive agenda operating in the Eurasian space, this in order to establish broad cross-platform cooperation.  Contacts were held between ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). SCO Secretary-General Zhang Ming addressed the opening ceremony of the EAS plenary meeting.

Russia spoke in favour of building up non-politicised, applied collaboration within the framework of the East Asia Summit, including in the context of the endeavour to coordinate its new mid-term Plan of Action – a roadmap of its work for 2023-2027.

Russia put forward the idea of launching a mechanism for a collective response to pandemic threats on the EAS platform. This could prove a good practical result of years-long efforts to promote cooperation in this area, the key aspects of which are reflected in the EAS’ related top-level statement adopted in 2020 at Russia’s proposal.  

We drew our partners’ attention to the need to meet the challenges involved in promoting tourism cooperation, as enshrined in the leaders’ 2021 statement approved at Russia’s initiative.  We noted the importance of organising, as soon as possible, a meeting of the heads of the related agencies from the EAS member countries, with the purpose of launching focus programmes for targeted interaction in order to encourage a post-pandemic economic recovery in the region’s countries.   

ASEAN has actively supported the Russian proposals to establish collaboration between volunteer organisations in the interests of greater region-wide humanitarian connectivity.