Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's opening remarks at a joint meeting of the collegiums of the foreign ministries of Russia and Belarus, Moscow, November 25, 2025
25 November 2025 13:29
1964-25-11-2025
Mr Ryzhenkov,
Mr Glazyev,
Colleagues,
Friends,
I am pleased to welcome you to Moscow for another joint meeting of the collegiums of the foreign ministries of Russia and Belarus.
Work in this format, which we maintain only with our Belarusian friends, speaks to the unprecedentedly high level of foreign policy coordination between Moscow and Minsk. Annual collegium meetings have a proven track record as an effective mechanism for developing common approaches to key international issues and synchronising our efforts on the global stage. They provide a good opportunity to strengthen professional contacts between the senior officials and experts from our two ministries, as well as simply to have a friendly unofficial discussion.
Today, we are looking back at the outgoing year, which marked the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, a sacred holiday for Belarusians and Russians. I would like to express my gratitude to our Belarusian allies for their consistently close cooperation and support in all our joint undertakings. Guided by the Programme of Coordinated Actions in Foreign Policy of the States Parties to the Treaty on the Establishment of the Union State for 2024-2026, we have closely cooperated within the framework of our common Eurasian associations, such as (in addition to the Union State) the CSTO, the EAEU, the CIS, and the SCO, as well as within BRICS, the UN, and the OSCE. In all of these organisations, we act in solidarity on virtually all international issues. We are implementing important joint initiatives, including those aimed at strengthening security and stability in Eurasia. Diplomatic support of large-scale bilateral cooperation and integration processes within the Union State has remained our overriding priority.
Undoubtedly, the Union State is a format that sets the tone for interaction across several areas. In accordance with the resolution adopted by the collegiums and instructions issued by the respective heads of state and government, we primarily focused on promoting cooperation within common integration entities, deepening ties among them, and expanding cooperation with the countries from the Global South. Likewise, we focused on coordinating our efforts on international legal issues, among them countering the West's sanctions aggression, and other areas.
I believe we have tangible results to present to the people of our countries. Russia's initiative to grant the SCO an observer status with the CIS has been implemented, and the CIS Plus format has been created. In September, secretaries general of the CSTO, the CIS, and the SCO signed a roadmap to promote trilateral cooperation drafted by the Russian side and a Joint Statement on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII and the foundation of the UN. The practice of cross-inviting heads of the executive bodies of the CSTO, the CIS, and the SCO to one other's summits continued. I believe it would be useful to have the Permanent Committee of the Union State step up to this interaction as well, if the State Secretary of our Union, Mr Glazyev, who is here today, supports this idea.
We have facilitated the dialogue between the EAEU and the SCO and BRICS, and the coordination of 2026-2030 EEC-ASEAN Cooperation Programme. We have started looking into the possibility of expanding CIS contacts with African organisations and established cooperation between the CSTO Secretariat and the AU Counter Terrorism Centre.
As I mentioned earlier, we have jointly promoted on all international venues the initiative advanced by the President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, on the development of the Eurasian Charter of Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century which aligns with the initiative put forward by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to form a new architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia. We helped ensure the success of the 3rd Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security in October. We are pleased to note the growing number of the countries that share our approaches and are willing to join this work.
The bilateral interstate Treaty on Security Guarantees within the Union State entered into force in March. Special representatives of Russia and Belarus - deputy foreign ministers Alexander Grushko and Igor Sekreta - began reviewing its implementation. On September 26, the first meeting of respective interagency delegations took place in Moscow. Overlapping assessments of the security situation in the Union State were noted.
The sector-specific departments of our respective ministries coordinated approaches to international legal cooperation priorities, which I mentioned earlier. Notably, the support in the UN General Assembly for the traditional resolution on the report by the International Criminal Court has significantly decreased. For the first time in all the years this resolution has been put to a vote, and fewer than half of UN member states voted in favour. In March, the presidents of Russia and Belarus signed a milestone bilateral Agreement on the Mutual Protection of Citizens from Unjustified Prosecution by Foreign States and International Judicial Bodies. A draft directive of the Supreme State Council of the Union State on mutual support and cooperation in the field of international justice has been drafted and submitted for consideration. In conjunction with our Belarusian friends, we are promoting the Declaration on Enhancing the Role of International Law and guiding principles on qualifying unilateral coercive measures as unlawful, which was signed at the previous meeting of the collegiums. In May, our permanent representatives circulated it in the UN Security Council and the General Assembly.
We have made significant efforts to expand international support for countering the practice of illegal unilateral sanctions. On the initiative of the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter, of which Russia and Belarus are members and play an important role, the UN General Assembly adopted, in June, a resolution establishing the International Day against Unilateral Coercive Measures. It will be observed on December 4. We ensured the inclusion in the final document of the 16th UNCTAD ministerial session of provisions on the negative impact of unilateral sanctions on world trade. I'm aware that many in this audience took part in this work. Thank you all.
The agenda of today's meeting is quite extensive. We will begin by discussing issues related to the joint use of humanitarian policy tools, the promotion of traditional values, and the preservation of historical memory. We will then consider matters related to cooperation with friendly states and their associations, as well as our approaches to building relations with the countries whose governments pursue an openly unfriendly policy towards us. This will also include our relations with the organisations that deviate from their own founding principles, do not adhere to impartiality and equal distance, but instead seek to take predominantly pro-Western political positions.
We will place special emphasis on sharing experience in foreign policy information support. Following the meeting, we plan to sign a Resolution of the collegiums and a Plan for inter-ministerial consultations for 2026.
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