Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions at a joint news conference with Foreign Minister of the Republic of Belarus Sergey Aleinik following a meeting of the Foreign Ministry Boards of Russia and Belarus, Moscow, December 15, 2023

Representatives of the media,

Another important event, a joint session of the Boards of the Foreign Ministries of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, has been held.

As always, it was a candid, trust-based, and genuinely friendly discussion. I would like to express my gratitude to our Belarusian friends for the highly professional exchange of opinions. This meeting reaffirmed the importance of continuing coordination on all international agenda items. In this regard, our approaches almost completely overlap.

We evaluated the effectiveness of the work done since the last meeting of the ministerial boards and noted the successful implementation of the 2022-2023 programme for coordinated foreign policy actions.

We have signed a new programme for 2024-2026, which will guide our actions during the next three years. It maintains continuity with previous documents and reiterates the priority of diplomatic support for integration processes unfolding within the Union State. At the same time, it reflects the need to significantly increase our focus on foreign policy priorities in areas related to the countries of the Global South and the Global East.

We discussed the agenda items in this context. Separate reports covered our interaction with Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Latin American, and Caribbean countries. We focused on aligning our efforts in bilateral trade, the economy, cultural and, humanitarian matters, and education with these regions while concurrently fostering our relations with organisations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

We will do our best to coordinate our approaches within the SCO, of which Minsk will become a full member in 2024. We welcome our Belarusian friends’ interest in BRICS, and we have plans for them as well. We stand ready to support the expansion of Belarus's contacts with associations with which Russia has long-established partnerships, including ASEAN. We also intend to closely coordinate our actions in the UN, the OSCE, and CICA, and in general within the framework of the Eurasian intercontinental architecture of security and cooperation.

We applaud the outcomes of the High-Level International Conference “Eurasian Security: Reality and Prospects of a World in Transition” convened in Minsk on October 26 as part of the Belarusian CSTO chairmanship on the initiative of President Alexander Lukashenko. We will build on this experience and create a regular, at least annual, platform for evaluating ongoing processes which affect security in Eurasia, with the West downright refusing to continue to build equal relations in this sphere with the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.

Acting under the 2024-2026 programme for coordinated foreign policy actions, we will focus on enhancing humanitarian cooperation with an emphasis on expanding the scientific, educational, and cultural space of the Union State. We plan to focus specifically on patriotic education of youth and the preservation of historical memory.

All our agreements have been included in a resolution adopted by the board. This is the second signed document. The third is the Plan for Ministerial Consultations for 2024 which includes 34 rounds, and we agreed to make every effort to ensure that all of them take place.

Our shared opinion is that today’s decisions will further promote our cooperation and the international standing of the Union State. We teamed up with State Secretary Dmitry Mezentsev to discuss integration construction and reviewed the schedule of upcoming high-level and highest-level contacts, as well as the meetings of other Union State bodies.

We discussed efforts to strengthen the legal framework for national and collective security. This issue is becoming increasingly urgent.

We want to pay special attention to our interaction in the cultural area. I would like to note in this context a landmark event – the recent unveiling of a monument to the Holy, Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky in front of the Russian Embassy in Minsk. It embodies a millennia-old union bequeathed to us by our ancestors. Using this opportunity, I would like to thank the Belarusian leadership, all our friends and Ambassador of Russia to Belarus Boris Gryzlov who helped see through this important undertaking.

Next year, we will celebrate two anniversaries – 80 years since the liberation of Belarus from the Nazi invaders and 25 years since the signing of the Treaty on Creation of the Union State. The Union State Standing Committee is compiling a list of such events. Our ministries will play an active role in planning and hosting them.

We exchanged views on current international problems. We discussed in detail the global situation at a restricted attendance meeting yesterday. I would like to thank Sergey Aleinik and his team for their friendly and productive collaboration.

Question: Russian pensioners living in Belarus receive their pensions in a complicated procedure – first, Russian roubles are converted into dollars and then the dollars are converted into Belarusian roubles. Are you considering the possibility of simplifying this process as part of dedollarisation by directly converting Russian roubles into Belarusian currency?

Russian citizens who give birth to a child in Belarus must travel to Russia to enter this information in their Russian domestic passports. Is it possible to do this instead at Russian consulates in the Republic of Belarus?

Sergey Lavrov: We have learned many things about what is happening now and what needs to be improved.

I agree it is inconvenient to receive pensions via dollars. This procedure should also be part of dedollarisation. This is within the competence of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and the Finance Ministry. We will definitely ask about the purpose of this intricate procedure, all the more so since it is linked to the dollar. We will tell you later what we find out.

Work is underway to even out the rights of Russian and Belarusian citizens. This is directly related. Now 95 percent of our trade is conducted in national currencies. It is definitely possible to resolve this problem. I will find out how. In any event, we will submit a relevant proposal to the High-Level Group of the Union State Council of Ministers.

Now about consulates and their powers, including the possibility of adding to passports children born into Russian families on the territory of Belarus. This is not only our area of responsibility. The Interior Ministry of Russia that deals with migration is also in charge of this. We will talk with our colleagues. I think that here also we should make daily life of our citizens as easy as possible on the basis of reciprocity.

Question: The use of ICT for illegal purposes, including terrorist and extremist activities, features prominently on today’s agenda. Despite the opposition of the collective West, Moscow has been advancing ready-to-go packages of information security-related initiatives for many years now. Could you share more details about Russia’s initiatives and the efforts deployed jointly with Belarus seeking to promote them at international venues?

Sergey Lavrov: Information security has two dimensions. One concerns threats arising from the unlawful use of ICT in the military-political sphere, i.e., international security. A UN Open-Ended Working Group was created at our initiative jointly with many co-sponsors, including our Belarusian friends, several years ago.

Your question probably relates to cybercrime. This is another initiative of ours, which we advanced in collaboration with the Republic of Belarus and almost 50 co-sponsors. It was approved by the UN General Assembly in 2019. It envisions (according to the General Assembly resolution) the development of a comprehensive International Convention to Counter the Use of ICT for Criminal Purposes. The resolution highlighted the importance of having the future document cover a really broad range of issues. Based on this, during the six sessions of the UN Ad Hoc Committee that had been created specifically to develop the convention (it has been in operation since 2021), we submitted a draft of the corresponding International Convention on Combating Cybercrime, in which we tried to ensure the broadest possible coverage, as requested by the UN General Assembly. This includes not only phone scams, child sex abuse imagery, paedophilia, and theft of money, but also issues related to the use of ICT for terrorist purposes, extremism propaganda, and other aspects of organised crime.

The West voted against it. They don't like it. They are reluctant to give such a universally broad interpretation to the mandate of the UN General Assembly and strive to narrow down this convention as much as possible in terms of the scope of its activities and areas that will be subject to regulation. In fact, the West wants to preserve another document they are promoting which is the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe of 2001.

We did not join this convention. Not only does it not cover the entire spectrum of existing threats in terms of criminal use of cyberspace but, most importantly, it allows the special services of one country to hack the state-operated servers of another country without permission or notification. This (according to the Budapest Convention of 2001) is acceptable behaviour.

The West is trying hard to lure many of our neighbours into this convention. We are doing our best to explain the danger of this step, and the traps that the Westerners are preparing to further justify their policy of interference in literally all spheres of the domestic life of all countries, including those located within the borders of our common space.

This UN Special Committee has two more months to go before it will need to adopt a final report. I am not sure how this will play out. Several dozen countries support our concept. We continue our explanatory efforts, but the West is using its well-known methods of blackmail and intimidation (including on a personal level) in order to thwart the adoption of this document. We'll see. It is a diplomatic bout in which we try to use clean tactics, while the West has to play dirty.

Question: Recently, much has been said in the West about reducing aid to the Ukrainian regime. Is it possible to believe such statements? Is Moscow receiving any signals from the West on the need to start talks on Ukraine?

Sergey Lavrov: Yes, we hear the talk that it is time to reduce aid to Ukraine. This is not just talk. It is not easy for both Europe and the US to find free money for the continued support of the Vladimir Zelensky regime. He has obviously failed to live up to their expectations and play the role of an instrument in undermining Russian security and eliminating our common history, culture and everything Russian on Kiev-controlled territory. You hear assessments made by sober-minded politicians in NATO and the EU. Better late than never. It is time they realised the utter stalemate of the war they unleashed on Russia through the Zelensky regime.

As for signals for talks, President of Russia Vladimir Putin talked about this issue yesterday during Direct Line and his large news conference, and many times before. We have never avoided talks. This question should not be addressed to us.

At one time, President Vladimir Putin said those who oppose talks (referring, in part, to those who forbade Vladimir Zelensky from signing the already reached agreement in April 2022) should realise that the longer they compel Zelensky to wage the war, the more complicated the terms they will face for starting these talks.

They say Russia should sustain “a strategic defeat on the battlefield.” This is exactly what they are getting on the battlefield.

As for the attempts to conduct some talks, they change their minds faster than the weather. They lie without shame. When they continue saying that they will not discuss anything about Ukraine without Ukraine, they are being hypocritical. This is very different from the reality. (I don’t want to mention any names and don’t have the right to do so). Several senior leaders of Western countries did this. One of them sent signals via different channels (at least three different channels) suggesting a meeting to discuss what to do with Ukraine and European security at a meeting. This happened three times although this leader can directly approach his colleague in Moscow. We have been seeing such tricks for the past six months.

If someone is interested in putting an end to the attempts to enhance one’s own security at the expense of others and to prejudice the lawful interests of the Russian Federation and Russians residing in many European countries, they are welcome. We are always willing to discuss such issues. Those who condition future contacts with Russia on the Nazi regime defeating it, know nothing about politics and the real alignment of forces. We have nothing to discuss with these people.