Press release on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's participation in the G20 ministerial meeting
24 September 2025 17:00
1534-24-09-2025
During the UN General Assembly High-Level Week in New York, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take part in the G20 ministerial meeting on September 25. The event will be held as part of South Africa's current presidency and be conducted in a format that is open to all UN member states and observers. Most of the G20 members and invited states and international organisations will be represented at a high level.
This will be the second G20 ministerial meeting on the central universal platform for multilateral cooperation. This year, the participants will focus on the correlation of peace and sustainable economic growth, including in the context of the 80th anniversary of the UN. An exchange of views on key challenges to global stability and prosperity, the tone for which will be set by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's welcoming address, is expected to become an important step towards holding the G20 Summit in Johannesburg on November 22-23. The South African presidency will sum up the meeting outcomes in a separate summary on its own behalf.
In its statement, the Russian side will present fundamental assessments of the international situation, focusing on the root causes of tensions and the growing number and scale of conflicts, the resolution of which - particularly in the Gaza Strip - continues to stall with the connivance of certain countries. The Russian side will also stress the unacceptability of the confrontational course pursued by Western countries, which, in their attempts to hold on to their erstwhile dominance and to defeat its opponents, are employing a broad range of hybrid warfare tools, such as interference in other countries' internal affairs as they try to substitute lop-sided "rules" that suit only their own needs for the internationally accepted legal norms, to impose illegitimate sanctions, and to resort to other unfair competition tricks.
The Russian side will highlight the emergence of a multipolar world order that calls for respectful coexistence of nations on the basis of sovereign equality of states. In light of the seminal 80th anniversary of the Great Victory of the Allied powers over Nazi Germany and its minions, which laid the legal and institutional foundations of modern-day international relations, the pivotal importance of preserving the central role of the UN and its Charter will be emphasised. Russia will call on its partners to work towards building indivisible security and eliminating the bloc confrontation mindset. It will underscore the unacceptability of weaponising the economy, which should be regarded as a realm of cooperation and strengthening of mutually beneficial ties, rather than a means of settling scores with strategic opponents. In this regard, the G20 can play a constructive role as a leading forum for a substantive dialogue between the developing and developed economies.
Democratisation of global governance will be a top priority. It is time to implement the G20 agreements between the leaders to reform the Bretton Woods institutions that have remained on paper since 2008 in order to make the voice of the countries with emerging markets louder. Restoring the World Trade Organisation's functionality with an emphasis on reviving its dispute settlement body is also part of the agenda. It's a matter of particular urgency amid escalating tariff turbulence. Promoting innovative international formats relying on an agenda of unity and creation, such as BRICS, the SCO, and the EAEU, to name a few, are Russia's top priorities.
A special emphasis will be placed on the G20 countries' economic specialisation. Adding peace and security, matters that fall under the purview of the UN Security Council, to its agenda waters down the G20's mandate and distracts its members from addressing sector-specific challenges. These include, above all, keeping up financial stability and dynamic growth, countering geoeconomic fragmentation and reducing inequality, ensuring food security, and providing non-discriminatory access to advanced technologies and financing on fair terms.
The partners will focus in particular on the principle of consensus-based decision-making within the G20. The Russian side considers any exceptions to this rule unacceptable, especially in the context of adopting the leaders' declaration.
The year 2025 marks another significant anniversary, the 65th anniversary of the adoption, at the initiative of the Soviet Union, of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. In this context, Russia deems it appropriate to raise, at the G20 platform, the issue of continued exploitation of Africa, Asia, and Latin America by neoliberal elites through forcing trade and economic agreements with asymmetric financial gains and predatory loans on them, and plundering their natural resources. The neocolonial Western practices fuel North-South development imbalances, turning some economies into raw material appendages of the "golden billion," and impeding efforts to combat poverty and famine.
Overall, the Russian delegation plans to use the ministerial meeting to set a guiding course towards elaborating, over the next two months, balanced agreements for the Johannesburg G20 Summit that take into account the World Majority's interests. Moscow is convinced that South Africa's watch will consolidate and build on the achievements of the BRICS members' (Indonesia, India, and Brazil) G20 presidencies in 2022-2024 in advancing aspirations of the developing countries. Furthermore, this marks the first time in history that an African country holds the G20 presidency, further predetermining the importance of focusing on the needs of the Global South and the Global East.
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