Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks during a joint news conference with Foreign Minister of Indonesia Sugiono following their talks, Moscow, June 17, 2025
17 June 2025 16:05
1032-17-06-2025
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As usual, we held talks with Foreign Minister of Indonesia Sugiono in an atmosphere of trust, and in an open, friendly and constructive manner.
Once again, we noted the fact that our two countries marked 75 years of Russia-Indonesia diplomatic relations in February 2025. These relations have been gathering momentum lately. We have established regular trust-based political dialogue at the highest and high levels. There are also regular inter-parliamentary exchanges. Today, we expressed our shared interest in having our respective political parties work with certain neighbouring countries and other nations. In addition, the ruling parties of both Russia and Indonesia could contribute to various frameworks which shape our strategic partnership.
We had a detailed discussion of our bilateral agenda, as well as regional and international affairs. Both our countries are looking forward to stepping up cooperation in defence and security matters, in particular in cybersecurity, law enforcement, including fighting cybercrime, drug trafficking, and extremism. We also spoke out in favour of consolidating the legal framework governing our relations.
We noted that cooperation between Russian and Indonesian navies for holding joint exercises has been gathering momentum. As usual, building on its existing experience and know-how, our country is ready to review any requests our Indonesian friends might have in terms of our military-technical cooperation.
We share the view that we must ensure that trade between our countries keeps growing. While quite impressive at $4.3 billion, it has so far failed to live up to the potential our two countries have. Today, we talked about the importance of fulfilling the agreements resulting from the 13th meeting of the Russian-Indonesian Joint Commission on Trade, Economic and Technological Cooperation, which took place in April 2025. We stressed our readiness to deliver more Russian goods to the Indonesian market, including fuel and energy, agricultural products, fertilisers and other goods.
Of course, apart from trade we have a mutual commitment to undertaking joint investment projects, with a primary focus on fuel and energy, as well as other sectors, including high technology.
Indonesia has plans to develop a homegrown nuclear sector, and Rosatom is ready to help it build an NPP. We also believe in the promise of promoting the use of nuclear technology for non-energy purposes. Rosatom has serious competences in this regard.
We view Indonesia as a friendly nation and are ready to work together to study and explore outer space for peaceful purposes, including by offering training and cooperating in building spacecrafts. There can be other forms of cooperation too.
Having Indonesia sign a free trade agreement with the EAEU could have a major impact in terms of strengthening economic cooperation with our Indonesian friends. This agreement is about to be finalised. We hope that it will be signed without delay.
We talked about our decades-old cooperation. People in our countries appreciate the bonds we have forged in research, education, and capacity building. Russia will continue sponsoring scholarships to enable Indonesians to master civilian professions, and we are even ready to offer Indonesia a bigger quota, should it express its interest. We are also ready to support and accompany the growing appetite among people in Indonesia for studying the Russian language. We know how this can be done and will build on this experience.
During the meeting, we paid special attention to enabling Russian and Indonesian audiences to access impartial and unbiased news reporting about the developments in our respective countries, regional and global affairs. We agreed to facilitate closer ties between the leading media entities in Russia and Indonesia. There are interesting projects in this domain.
Direct flights between Moscow and Denpasar resumed in September 2024, which helped increase the number of Russian tourists visiting Indonesia, primarily Bali. Overall, this is strengthening our transport connectivity, economic exchanges and contacts between people. In 2024, 180,000 Russian citizens visited Indonesia, and this is not the limit. For our part, we will be happy to see more Indonesian tourists in our vast country.
Our foreign ministries maintain close cooperation. We have a three-year plan of consultations, which are held regularly and fruitfully. Four rounds of consultations were held last year at the level of deputy foreign ministers alone, and many meetings were held between department directors. These consultations help us promote our coordination at the UN, the G20 and other multilateral international platforms.
We pointed out that our positions on the majority of international issues, including the most important current matters, coincide or are similar. I am referring to the situation in the Middle East and the Palestinian territories, and Israel's attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is necessary for the international community to make every possible effort to calm down and deescalate the situation and promote settlement of any disputes at the negotiating table.
It is delightful that Indonesia has joined BRICS as a full member. We emphasised that our joint work within this framework will help strengthen the multipolar foundations of global politics and economy.
We share an interest in the constructive development of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, so that any attempts to incite confrontation there fail. Relations between Russia and ASEAN are of great significance in this context. We welcome Jakarta's resolve to continue to encourage the development of Russia-ASEAN cooperation, in particular in light of the 35th anniversary of our dialogue partnership with the Association, which we will mark next year. We drew the attention of our colleagues to the initiative for creating a Eurasian architecture of equal and indivisible security, which the Russian Federation is promoting jointly with many other countries and which will be open to any country on the continent, unlike the schemes advocated by our Western colleagues in the form of Indo-Pacific strategies.
I expressed gratitude to our friends for their balanced stance on the conflict in Ukraine, for their understanding of the situation and their recognition of the futility of pandering to the attempts to include the Ukrainian issue in the agenda of all international organisations and platforms. Our position has not changed. We were forced to start the special military operation after more than a decade of attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO following the February 2014 state coup, which was done to create direct threats to Russia's military security in the immediate proximity of our borders. It is obvious that the Ukrainian regime's actions to outlaw everything Russian in education, information and culture after the February 2014 coup directly affected the legitimate rights of a vast number of Ukrainian citizens, primarily in the south-eastern regions. These rights, formalised in Article 1 of the UN Charter, encourage respect for human rights without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. The Kiev regime is exterminating the [Russian] language and the canonical Orthodox religion. The relevant laws have been adopted, but the West is keeping silent.
Overall, I believe that it was a useful conversation. I am confident that we have made the necessary contribution to our presidents' upcoming meeting in St Petersburg in the next few days. We hope that they will give their blessing to continuing our fruitful cooperation.
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