Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks and answers to media questions during a joint news conference with Foreign Minister of Belarus Sergey Aleinik following the meeting of the Boards of the Foreign Ministries of Russia and Belarus, Minsk, January 19, 2023
19 January 2023 19:02
67-19-01-2023
Mr Aleinik,
Friends and colleagues,
We had a busy programme for our talks. The day started with the reception by President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. During an almost 1.5 hour meeting, we discussed all strategic areas for further deepening our allied relations in accordance with the agreements reached by our presidents for promoting the interests of the Union State, Russia, and Belarus in the military-political, security, economic, humanitarian and other spheres in which our states operate.
After this we held bilateral talks and a joint meeting of our boards. The conversation was truly professional, based on trust and camaraderie. It confirmed that the approaches of our countries align on the issues discussed that concern key aspects of global development.
The annual joint meetings of our boards are an essential instrument of interaction between our foreign ministries. It allows us to share our assessments of urgent international issues, coordinate our steps on multilateral platforms and generally build our common foreign policy line for upholding jointly the interests of Russia, Belarus and the Union State in the world arena.
The topics of our discussions today were determined by the fundamental changes that took place since our previous meeting. We reviewed a package of issues pertaining to foreign policy planning and compared our positions on the work on updating strategic foreign policy documents, which is being done in Russia and Belarus. This work is closely coordinated.
We discussed our interaction on arms control and coordination of our steps in the OSCE and in our relations with the EU, NATO and the Council of Europe.
We paid special attention to coordinating our positions in international human rights and economic organisations, and mapped out joint steps to prevent the politicisation of their activities - a policy that is consistently pursued by our Western colleagues.
We reached a common opinion on all issues and this opinion is recorded in the detailed final resolution. We also signed a plan for foreign ministry consultations in 2023. It is very intensive and contains over 30 main items. This plan provides for a more consistent, systematic exchange of views and devising common steps by our agencies.
One more document that we signed on the sidelines of the meeting is a Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of Belarus on Ensuring Biological Security. It is aimed at enhancing our national security, the security of each of the two countries and on curbing threats in this area, which are emanating from the activities of the military departments of third countries and related organisations. Implementation of this document provides for a regular exchange of information between the relevant structures with a view to drafting response measures if necessary.
We again expressed our deep concern over the destructive course of the US and its satellites, which is aimed at expanding NATO and bringing its military forces and infrastructure to our common borders. Such activities are escalating military-political tensions and cannot go unanswered.
We share the view that the collective West has actually turned Ukraine into a bridgehead for the continued military-political cultivation of the post-Soviet space and for subversive activities against the Union State. This is creating a direct threat to the vital interests of Russia and Belarus. One of the responses is the strengthening of a joint regional group of troops on the territory of the republic, which started in October 2022 at the decision of our presidents.
Mr Aleinik and I reviewed all these topics, along with topical issues of bilateral cooperation, during separate talks just before the meeting of the boards. We focused on the West's continued attempts to interfere in the domestic affairs of our states, in part, by imposing illegal unilateral restrictions. These measures are aimed (as Washington and European bureaucrats are now publicly announcing without being embarrassed any longer) at undermining our economies and political stability in Russia and Belarus.
However, in practice this Western blitzkrieg did not succeed either in Russia or Belarus.
Many joint steps taken in recent months strengthened the economic sovereignty of our countries. These are primarily projects in modern technology, food security and transport-logistics connectivity.
Vital decisions were made during the December 19, 2022, visit to Minsk by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. The prime ministers of the two countries maintain daily contact. All relevant departments are focused on regular, system-wide coordination. Bilateral trade has grown substantially against the backdrop of lesser dependence on Western countries. It has reached a record $50 billion (probably, we should start using some other currencies instead of the dollar to make everything clearer for everyone). Large-scale investment projects are carried out with Russia's financial participation.
Considering that Russia launched its EAEU Presidency and Belarus started its CSTO Presidency, the participants in the talks focused on the development of Eurasian integration aimed at improving the living standards of our people and strengthening the security of both countries and the Union State. For our part, we fully supported the initiative of President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko to hold this year a high-level international conference on Eurasian security under the CSTO's aegis and invite representatives of the UN, the SCO, the CIS and other friendly associations and states to attend it.
The current meeting of the collegiums of the two ministries was timed to coincide with the upcoming professional holidays - the Diplomatic Worker Day in Belarus (January 22) and Russia (February 10) and a momentous historical date - the 210th anniversary of the Victory in the 1812 Patriotic War. We visited a wonderful exhibition devoted to this anniversary and I would like to thank, along with others, its organiser Vladimir Likhodedov.
Together with our Belarusian friends we emphasised the importance of preserving the historical memory of the glorious chapters of our common history. We expressed support for intensifying work on youth patriotic education. Following the meeting, the participants approved the initiative to build a memorial obelisk in honour of the heroes who completed the rout of the Napoleonic army in the battle on the Berezina River. Napoleon led an army that brought together the better part of Europe at the time to attack Russia. It has been suggested to build this obelisk on Brilevo Field in the Borisov District of the Minsk Region. We expect the Union State's Standing Committee to actively join in this project. State Secretary Dmitry Mezentsev reaffirmed his willingness to take part in this important joint project.
On the whole, I believe the meeting was fairly useful. We agreed to monitor daily the implementation of instructions recorded in a resolution we have approved today. The next meeting of our joint collegiums will take place in Moscow next November.
Question (addressed to both ministers): It is important to keep diplomatic channels open. Regarding Belarus and Russia's participation in the OSCE, what steps could be taken in response to the provocative policy that is being pursued there? What does the future hold for us as members of this organisation?
Sergey Lavrov (speaking after Sergey Aleinik): I agree with what Sergey Aleinik has just said. The OSCE is obviously going downhill fast, as it departs ever farther from the noble principles written into the Helsinki Final Act and the documents approved at the OSCE summits that followed. I will specially mention the documents addressing military-political security that are based on the principles of equal and indivisible security. At the OSCE summits in Istanbul in 1999 and in Astana in 2010, the leaders of all participating countries put their signatures to the commitment that no country is to strengthen its security at the expense of the security of any other country and no country or organisation in the OSCE space is to seek dominance in the field of military-political security in the region.
Everyone who keeps up with current developments - there are daily reports in the media - understands that all these commitments have been trampled by our Western colleagues, who have been pursuing the eastward expansion of NATO closer to the borders of the Russian Federation and the Republic Belarus. They moved up their military infrastructure. Our repeated warnings that this was a violation of the obligations they assumed were met with deafening silence. Russia's proposals to write these political commitments into international agreements and make them legally binding were turned down. We were told directly that only NATO could provide legal guarantees of security.
Neither the Secretary-General of the OSCE, nor any of the countries who held OSCE presidency during all these years has done anything to protect the good name of this organisation, or its independent character, or the principles codified in the documents approved at the highest level. These documents proved to be nothing more than empty words like many other things that we have been talking about a lot of late, including the notorious Minsk agreements, which appear to have been signed with no intention of ever being honoured, but to gain time to prepare for a war with the Russian Federation.
As for the Minsk agreements, we are disappointed. The OSCE took a decision to set up a Special Monitoring Mission to see how the Minsk agreements were being carried out on the ground, including the ceasefire, the disengagement of the parties, efforts to restore peaceful life and economic ties between the areas controlled by the Kiev regime, and the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, as well as humanitarian contacts, and social security payments. The approach taken by the mission cannot obviously be described as unbiased, as it preferred to support a scenario that the Ukrainian authorities were trying to thrust into the public eye. In some cases the mission suppressed information about the real situation.
For example, it took us several years to persuade the mission to release data on casualties among civilians as a result of hostilities and the damage done to civilian infrastructure and to not just give totals but to release figures for each area where relevant events were taking place. It turned out that the figures showing damage done to civilian infrastructure and casualties among civilians in the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics were five times those recorded in the area controlled by the Kiev regime.
As soon as these figures were made public, the representatives of Ukraine had a fit of hysterics, turned it into a scandal, and, as a matter of fact, made the OSCE Secretariat stop releasing this information. We continued to insist that this practice resume. The Secretariat obviously failed to behave as a neutral mechanism that was put in place to implement the decisions of the Permanent Council, ministerial meetings and summits and instead acted with one eye turned toward the Kiev regime under pressure from the West, which was urging the Secretariat to take relevant steps.
Now we are checking on the information that has surfaced in recent months in the course of the special military operation and that provides grounds to suspect that some employees at the Special Monitoring Mission had suppressed information about the real situation and, in fact, helped the Kiev regime to prepare and conduct the military crackdown on civilians.
More broadly, I mentioned what was done to suppress information about the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law in the east of Ukraine as a result of the Kiev regime's activities. The West remained silent on this topic, covering up these misdeeds. This was done by the same countries that are trying now to find any pretext to accuse the Russian Federation, as it conducts the special military operation, of failing to comply with international humanitarian law. This is nothing but double standards.
Regrettably, the OSCE is going downhill. This process is "assisted" by the chairs who led the Organisation in 2020-2021, such as Sweden in 2021. It was long before the forced decision was made to start the special military operation. Even then, when the circumstances were much more favourable, the Swedish Chairmanship openly neglected its obligations under the OSCE rules to act impartially and in a way where the Chairperson-in-Office is guided by consensus rather than led to take a particular side in the OSCE discussions. This rule was grossly violated by our Swedish neighbours. Last year, Poland finally buried the hope that the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office could really contribute to achieving the OSCE's original goals such as developing joint consensus-based approaches to addressing issues within the OSCE space.
The OSCE principles and its institutions are being discredited by the Special Representative on Freedom of the Media who keeps increasingly silent when it comes to obvious infractions on the part of the Ukrainian regime or its Western sponsors. The same goes for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights' activities. Unfortunately, the High Commissioner on National Minorities is unable to find a way to rely solely on the consensus agreements underlying the activities of this body, either.
We share our Belarusian friends' hope that someday the dead-end nature of the policy pursued by our Western colleagues in Europe will become clear to all. There is hope and hope dies last. So far, we have not seen any signs of common sense on the other side of the barricade that was built by our former Western partners. Even though occasional voices can be heard about the need to build security within this space with account taken of the interests of all states, including the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation, these voices are few and far between and they drown in the choir conducted by openly aggressive countries such as Poland, the three Baltic republics and a number of other countries that have taken the helm of the EU and NATO. This is sad and certainly reflects the overall process of Europe losing its independence, where the EU has become completely subordinated to the interests of the United States, which is the main beneficiary of the crisis involving the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus and the hybrid war unleashed by the West in order to undermine its competitors. This is yet another phase of unscrupulous actions seeking to remove competitors from world markets and the international political scene.
Europe (at least, responsible politicians in a number of European countries) is beginning to realise that they are being used and plunged into de-industrialisation. They are being deliberately degraded to make sure they do not even think about becoming independent players or acquiring strategic autonomy. This is regrettable. I'm sure that someday this will go away, and politicians will come to power who will rely on their legitimate national interests and on the interests of their peoples. So far, most European countries show no sign of such developments.
Question: Sofia Sapega has been denied pardon. Do you know why? Will Russia take steps to ensure her release?
Sergey Lavrov: Today, we discussed the situation involving Russian citizens detained in the Republic of Belarus and Belarusian citizens who are in a similar situation in Russia. There is an understanding that we will primarily be guided by our countries' respective laws and the procedures of the Prosecutor General's Offices and the Ministries of Justice. Our respective authorities, including the foreign ministries, are on top of these issues.
Question: What joint steps are Russia and Belarus taking to counter NATO expansion and Kiev regime's provocations?
Sergey Lavrov: President Vladimir Putin has already provided a detailed overview of the steps we are taking to counter NATO expansion. Frankly, the fact that the West grossly violated its own assurances that NATO would not expand a single inch to the east (the Soviet leadership was told so) was one of the main reasons why we were forced to launch the special military operation. Then, they violated their obligation under the founding Russia-NATO Act not to deploy significant combat forces permanently on the territory of its new members. Then, NATO crossed every red line; it didn't give a hoot about its own commitments and our multiple warnings to the effect that drawing Ukraine into NATO would not be tolerated and would not remain without consequences.
Not only did the West ignore these warnings and start to develop (militarily) Ukrainian territory, but it also widely encouraged, in theory and practice, the neo-Nazi manifestations of the Ukrainian regime following the coup, which (judging by it all) could not have taken place without the consent (or even support) of the United States. Europe swallowed this change of power despite its guarantees regarding the settlement of the crisis. They were ignored. The coup took place the morning after these guarantees were put on paper. Next, open Russophobes came to power and proclaimed the goal of expelling Russians from Crimea. You know the rest.
Some said that it was "then" and the events have now allegedly taken a different course. They tried to talk us into believing that prior to the events of 2022, when we still hoped to start a discussion about security guarantees in Europe.
All of that unfolded against the background of Zelensky's ensuing moves who, just like Poroshenko, was elected under the banner of bringing peace to Donbass. Instead of following up on his election promises, he instantly did an about-face and declared in August 2021 that if someone identifies as a Russian in terms of culture, language or traditions, they should clear out for Russia. All of that was unfolding amid total silence on the part of the West, or rather, was encouraged by it. That way, it was fulfilling its goal to not just turn Ukraine into an "anti-Russia" in the abstract sense of the word, but to cause damage to Russia's legitimate interests, degrade our country and, as political scientists and some Western politicians are now openly admitting, to inflict a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation with an eye towards calling its territorial integrity into question. These people have lost it and are placing their insatiable political ambitions and attempts to put their sense of superiority, as well as their colonial and neo-colonial dreams and illusions above the interests of their own peoples. I hope they will sober up sooner or later. We will do our best to make sure our colleagues from NATO and the EU sober up as soon as possible.
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