Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks at the 44th meeting of the Foreign Ministry's Council of Heads of Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation, Moscow, April 16, 2025
16 April 2025 12:54
638-16-04-2025
Colleagues,
Welcome to the regular meeting of the Foreign Ministry's Council of Heads of Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation.
At our last meeting on November 26, 2024, we discussed international region-to-region cooperation in agriculture - a programme known as Agricultural Diplomacy. The recommendations made during that meeting became instrumental in the relevant regional agencies' work, providing a roadmap for their activities.
It can be stated that the Russian regions' robust engagement has contributed to the progressive consolidation of our country's standing in foreign agricultural markets, deepening our cooperation with Global Majority countries on a broader scale.
Russia has been performing its obligations under international contracts in good faith. We are among the key actors when it comes to guaranteeing food security. I think that last year's meeting generated some useful insights. It received a positive response from President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin with regard to the recommendations we sent for consideration at the end of November 2024.
Today, we have several issues on our agenda. "Russia is a civilisation state." We are consistently guided by a belief that reliance on enduring values, common to all major world religions and cultures, as well as respect for other nations' identities and their right to choose their own path of development are key to the formation of a more just multipolar international system, and consequently, the most favourable external conditions for the development of the Russian Federation and all other countries that share such approaches.
I would like to state with satisfaction that more and more people around the world not only sympathise with our country and want to learn more about our way of life, but also view Russia as the guardian and defender of these traditional values. In particular, we see such sentiments filter through in Western countries. To make sure that these people do not feel neglected, President Vladimir Putin signed an Executive Order No 702 in August 2024 on providing humanitarian support to individuals sharing traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.
At the last meeting, when we planned to raise this issue at today's meeting, we also decided to create a working group at the council of heads of regions to implement the Presidential Executive Order at the regional level. Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Gleb Nikitin was appointed to lead the group. I know that recommendations have been drafted, which include, among other things, proposals to amend the respective legal acts to implement the objectives set in the Presidential Executive Order to the maximum effect.
As part of the implementation of this Executive Order, the Foreign Ministry cooperates, in addition to the regions and our friends there, with the Ministry of the Interior and the Agency for Strategic Initiatives to promote new projects. We provide information support for measures aimed at implementing the Executive Order. Russian embassies and consulates have received comprehensive explanations and recommendations, which are regularly updated, to use in their work to explain this initiative to citizens of the respective countries where they are posted.
The Foreign Ministry participates in the work of the centre that facilitates the relocation and adaptation of foreign nationals who decide to take advantage of the opportunity created by the Executive Order on Traditional Values to move to Russia and obtain Russian citizenship. I think that today, after we hear Gleb Nikitin's report and discuss it, we will develop new recommendations, which will serve as important guidelines for launching systemic work at the current stage of implementing Executive Order No. 702.
Together with our colleagues from the Interior Ministry, we will address any issues that might arise as we go.
Our main goal is to create transparent, understandable and convenient conditions for moving to our country and adapting for people from countries where unnatural models of behaviour, lifestyles and destructive neoliberal attitudes are being aggressively imposed, causing serious damage to people's moral health.
Before giving the floor to Gleb Nikitin, I would like to say that we will discuss two more issues today. One of them concerns Russian regions' involvement in projects for the development of the Arctic. The second issue relates to deepening region-to-region cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China and filling it with specific content.
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