Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the opening ceremony for an exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations with Egypt, Moscow, September 25, 2023

Your Excellency,

Friends,

Today, we are celebrating the 80th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between the Russian Federation and the Arab Republic of Egypt. The exhibition of archive documents we are opening today is dedicated to this event.

I want to thank the Department of History and Records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and personally its director, Nadezhda Barinova, for their painstaking work in compiling and presenting this comprehensive account of our relations in the 20th and 21st centuries.  

Moscow and Cairo established relations on August 26, 1943, a trying period for our two countries and the entire world. At that time, we and the anti-Hitler coalition were opposing the attempts to impose hegemony on a global scale, something that Nazi Germany and militarist Japan were trying to achieve.  

Today, we are facing a challenging period as well. We see yet another attempt by a narrow group of countries to legitimise their domination over the world. But, like in those years, the nations that respect themselves and value their history and traditions are defending their right to determine their paths of development on their own and choose their friends without prodding or limits from the outside. We promote our strategic partner relations with Egypt based on these foundations of respect for the national interests of the other. This is precisely what the Treaty of Comprehensive Partnership and Strategic Cooperation signed in October 2018 says.

Our presidents have established close, trust-based relations and are regularly in contact. In late June of this year, they held yet another round of wide-ranging talks on the sidelines of the second Russia-Africa Summit. Let me remind you that President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was at the source of creating the Russia-Africa forum and holding the first summit in this format.

We are expanding our trade and economic ties at a good pace. In 2022, trade grew to $6 billion, which is almost 30 percent more than in 2021. On March 20 of this year, Cairo hosted the 14th meeting of the Intergovernmental Russian-Egyptian Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation, which approved new resolutions on promoting cooperative projects.

In the latter half of the 20th century, Russian and Egyptian engineers and workers jointly carried out the huge project to build the Aswan High Dam. Today, Egypt’s first El-Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant is the flagship of our cooperation. Simultaneously, a Russian industrial zone is being created in the Suez Canal area.

Observers can talk for long about our humanitarian ties. Thousands of Egyptians have been educated at Russian universities or are continuing their educations. On September 12 of this year, a closing ceremony for the Year of Humanitarian Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Arab Republic of Egypt, a very successful event, was held on the new stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. 

I congratulate all of us on this important anniversary and look forward to seeing an interesting display.