🎙Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s opening remarks during talks with Minister of External Affairs of the Republic of India Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar(November 17, 2025, Moscow)
💬 We are pleased to welcome you to Moscow as you take part in a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of Heads of Government.
We regularly use the opportunities offered by multilateral events to talk and to sync our agendas on matters that are discussed and advanced during top-level meetings between President of Russia Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi.
🇷🇺🇮🇳This is our sixth meeting this year which shows that relations between Russia and India are relations of a particularly privileged strategic partnership and are our top foreign policy priority.
We maintain a substantive political dialogue; the heads of security councils, foreign affairs and defence ministries, and economic agencies meet on a regular basis in addition to top-level summits. Our treaty and legal framework and numerous and highly effective interstate cooperation mechanisms are being constantly updated and improved.
At this point, we are placing special emphasis on creating favorable conditions for our economic operators to work in each other’s markets. The list of bilateral trade items continues to expand, and supply chains that are impervious to illegitimate external influence continue to be built.
The International North-South Transport Corridor and the Northern Sea Route are the most promising projects in which Russia and India are deeply involved.
We can boast impressive results and, arguably, have even more favorable prospects in energy, industry, agriculture, military and military-technical cooperation, as well as in scientific-technical and cultural ties.
We closely cooperate on the international stage, including within the #UN, #BRICS, the #SCO, and the #G20. Without a doubt, our interaction contributes to strengthening regional and global stability and enhancing the effectiveness of these groups and organizations.
You have a rich and diverse programme in Moscow. As I understand, you will focus in particular on bilateral relations at your meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov. Today, however, we can address some of bilateral issues and focus mostly on cooperation in the international arena as part of the agreements between our respective foreign ministries.
Your visit comes at an opportune moment, with the Russian-Indian Summit in New Delhi just three weeks away.
🤝#RussiaIndia#DruzhbaDosti
🇷🇺🇮🇳 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Minister of External Affairs of India Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar hold talks on the sidelines of the #G20 Ministerial.
📍 Johannesburg, February 20
#RussiaIndia#DruzhbaDosti
🇷🇺Excerpts and key points from Russia's President Vladimir Putin's answers to questions at the plenary session of the 22nd annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club
📍October 2, 2025, Sochi
💬President Vladimir Putin:
• Modern institutions experienced degradation precisely during the period when certain countries, or the collective West, sought to exploit the post-Cold War situation by declaring themselves victors. In this context, they began imposing their will on everyone – this is the first point. Second, all others gradually, at first mutedly, then more actively, began to resist this.
• What was the OSCE created for? To resolve complex situations in Europe. And what did it all boil down to? The entire activity of the OSCE reduced to becoming a platform for discussing, for example, human rights in the post-Soviet space.
• We gradually came to realise that we needed to create institutions where issues are resolved not as our Western colleagues attempted to resolve them, but genuinely based on consensus, genuinely based on aligning positions. This is how the #SCO – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – emerged. This is how #BRICS emerged
• We are fighting this war and producing our own military equipment. But on the other side of the line, we are effectively at war with the collective might of NATO. They are no longer even hiding this fact. We see this in the direct involvement of NATO instructors and representatives from Western countries in the hostilities. A command centre has been established in Europe for the purpose of coordinating our adversary’s war effort: providing the Armed Forces of Ukraine with intelligence, satellite imagery, weapons, and training. And I must reiterate: these foreign personnel are not only involved in training; they are directly participating in operational planning and combat operations themselves.
❓ Yet if we are combating the entire NATO alliance, advancing thus with unwavering confidence, and are deemed a “paper tiger” – what does that make NATO itself? What manner of entity is it then?
• In September, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to about 44'700 people, nearly half of them irretrievable losses. In the same period, they forcibly mobilised slightly more than 18'000 people. Approximately 14'500 people have returned to the army from hospitals. If we add up these figures and subtract the total from the number of casualties, we will see that Ukraine lost 11'000 in one month. In other words, the number of its troops on the frontline was not replenished and is decreasing.
• They say: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – an atrocity, colluding with Hitler, the Soviet Union conspired with Hitler. Well, no, not at all. And you yourselves had conspired with Hitler shortly before and carved up Czechoslovakia. As though that never occurred. Propagandistically – yes, one can hammer these false equivalences into people’s heads, but in essence, we know how it truly was. That was the first act of the Ballet de la Merlaison.
• They began not merely equating Stalin’s and Hitler’s regimes – they attempted to erase the very outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials. Bizarre, given that these were participants in a shared struggle, and the Nuremberg Trials were collective, held precisely so that nothing similar would recur. Yet they began doing that. They started tearing down monuments to Soviet soldiers and so forth, those who fought against Nazism.
• The situation in Gaza is one of the most tragic events in recent history. It is also well known that the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has publicly admitted – and he often reflects Western views – that Gaza has become the largest children’s cemetery in the world. What could be more tragic? What could be more painful?
🎙Excerpt from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's remarks at the General Debate of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (New York, September 27, 2025)
WATCH the full speech (eng subs) ▶️
💬 Kiev regime, which seized power as a result of an anti-constitutional couporchestrated by the West in 2014, is pursuing the dismantling of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and eradicating the Russian language by law from all areas of life, including education, culture and media.
❌ Ukraine is the only country in the world that has a law suppressing the native language of nearly half of its population.
Arabic is not banned in Israel and Hebrew is not prohibited in the Arab countries or Iran. But Russian is banned in Ukraine. I would like to remind you that Article 1 of the UN Charter states that it is necessary to promote “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”
Europe remains silent, obsessed with its utopian goal of delivering a “strategic defeat” on Russia. Therefore, the Kiev regime can do anything it wishes to do, including terrorist attacks against politicians and journalists, torture and extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate bombing of civilian facilities, and reckless sabotage targeting nuclear power plants.
As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, since the very beginning, Russia has been and remains open to negotiations aimed at eliminating the root causes of the conflict. Russia’s security and vital interests must be reliably guaranteed. The rights of Russian and Russian-speaking people on territories remaining under the control of the Kiev regime must be restored in full.
☝️ This is the basis on which we are willing to discuss Ukraine’s security guarantees.
At the moment, neither Kiev nor its European sponsors show any sign of realising the gravity of the moment. <...> We pin certain hopes on continuing the Russian-US dialogue, especially since the Summit in Alaska.
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This December marks the 65th anniversary of the General Assembly’s adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. <...> The peoples of Africa and Asia refused to live under colonial oppression – a sentiment echoed by the populations of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya after the 2014 coup in Ukraine in their refusal to submit to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.
❗️ This regime, which came to power through illegitimate means, not only failed to represent their interests but also unleashed a war against them.
Today, Africa and the wider Global South are experiencing a renewed awakening as they strive for full independence – a process from which the UN must not stand apart. In December 2024, the General Assembly approved the Resolution on the Eradication of Colonialism in all its Forms and Manifestations.
As a next step, we call for a decision to declare December 14 the International Day against Colonialism. We welcome the role of the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter in consolidating efforts to counter neocolonial and other discriminatory practices against the Global Majority.
The Global Majority is now asserting its rights with a powerful voice. In this context, the #SCO and #BRICS play a prominent role as key mechanisms for coordinating the interests of the Global South and East.
These new realities have yet to be adequately reflected in the institutional architecture of our Organisation. The reform of the UN Security Council remains a particularly pressing issue.
✅ Russia advocates for its democratisation through broader representation of countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America. We support the candidacies of Brazil and India for permanent membership in the Security Council, as well as the redress of the historical injustice against Africa, based on parameters agreed upon by the continent’s countries themselves.
🎙Opening remarks by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during talks with President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping:
📍April 15, 2026, Beijing
💬Sergey Lavrov: Mr President, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your warm words addressed to us and for this meeting.
It underscores your personal attention to the development of mutually beneficial strategic relations with Russia, as well as to the agenda that will be discussed at the next summit during the upcoming visit of President Vladimir Putin to China.
Yesterday, my colleague and friend Wang Yi and I held very detailed discussions on preparations for this major upcoming visit.
Thanks to the diplomacy of the two Leaders – yourself and Vladimir Putin – our relations continue to demonstrate a high degree of resilience amid the upheavalsthat have engulfed the modern world both economically and geopolitically. Regrettably, these contradictions are increasingly taking on a military dimension.
Against this backdrop, Russia-China relations, which serve as a stabilizing factor in international affairs, are becoming ever more significant for the rest of the world, for the Global Majority, which seeks not problems or turbulence, but calm conditions for sustainable long-term development. It is in this context that we held detailed discussions and will brief you today on the outcome of our exchange.
Bilateral relations are on the rise in trade, investment, humanitarian affairs, culture and across all other areas. We also discussed regional and international issues, both from the standpoint of future Russia-China coordination on the bilateral track and in terms of our joint work at the #UN, the UN Security Council, the #SCO, #BRICS, the #G20 and #APEC.
As we agreed yesterday,we now haverobust roadmaps for further progress across all tracks identified by you and President Vladimir Putin for the period ahead.
#RussiaChina
🎙 Russia's President Vladimir Putin's interview to the Chinese news agency Xinhua ahead of his official visit to the People’s Republic of China (August 30, 2025)
Key points:
• The visit of our friend, President of China Xi Jinping, to Russia in May was a resounding success, drew wide international attention and was highly regarded in our country. His arrival coincided with a date that is sacred to us, the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
• The Chinese Leader was the principal guest of honour at the celebrations in Moscow. During our high-level talks, we held a very productive discussion of key issues in cooperation between our nations. The outcome was a comprehensive joint statement and the signing of a substantial package of bilateral documents.
• The peoples of the Soviet Union and China bore the brunt of the fighting and suffered the heaviest losses. <...> Before the full-scale outbreak of the Second World War, in the 1930s, when Japan treacherously launched a war of aggression against China, the Soviet Union extended a helping hand to the Chinese people.
• We see that in certain Western states the results of the Second World War are de facto revised, and the verdicts of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals are openly disregarded. <...> Russia and China resolutely condemn any attempts to distort the history of the Second World War, glorify Nazis, militarists and their accomplices, members of death squads and killers, or to defame Soviet liberators.
• At the invitation of President Xi, I will pay a return visit to China. I greatly look forward to visiting the city of Tianjin, which will host the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit under China's presidency.
• The #SCO's appeal lies in its simple but powerful principles: a firm commitment to its founding philosophy, openness to equal cooperation, non-confrontation with third parties, and respect for the national characteristics and uniqueness of each nation.
• I look forward to in-depth discussions with President Xi Jinping on all aspects of our bilateral agenda, including political and security cooperation, as well as economic, cultural and humanitarian ties.
• The Russia-China strategic partnership acts as a stabilising force. As the two leading powers in Eurasia, we cannot remain indifferent to the challenges and threats facing our continent and the wider world.
• Russia and China support reform of the UN so that it fully restores its authority and reflects modern realities. In particular, we advocate for making the Security Council more democratic by including states from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Any such reforms must, however, be approached with the utmost care.
• Close cooperation between Moscow and Beijing has positively shaped the work of leading economic forums, including the #G20 and #APEC. We are working closely with China within #BRICS to expand its role as a key pillar of global architecture. Alongside our Chinese partners, we support the reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
• Economic relations between Russia and China have reached an unprecedented level. Since 2021, bilateral trade has grown by about 100 billion dollars. <...> While trade figures are denominated in US dollar equivalents, transactions between Russia and China are carried out in rubles and yuan.
• Large-scale bilateral cultural and humanitarian initiatives make a significant contribution to fostering friendly relations. Education and science remain especially promising areas for cooperation. Academic mobility and inter-university contacts continue to grow. Today, more than 51'000 Chinese students are studying in Russia, while 21'000 Russian students are studying in China. Tourism is another important sphere I would like to note. The figures here are encouraging: by the end of 2024, mutual tourist flows had increased 2.5 times, reaching 2.8 million people.
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#RussiaChina
🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s video address to the 9th international conference "Russia and China: Cooperation in a New Era" (May 30, 2024)
💬 I am delighted to welcome the organisers of and participants in the 9th international conference "Russia and China: Cooperation in a New Era".
Most recently, Russia's President Vladimir Putin paid a state visit to China, which definitely became the centerpiece of bilateral exchanges this year. <...>
🇷🇺🇨🇳 The bond of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between Russia and China has grown unprecedentedly strong thanks to the personal efforts of both heads of state. The Beijing summit sealed the two countries’ firm commitment to further deepen and expand it. This commitment was documented in the two leaders’ joint final statement.
This year, Russia and China celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations. We mark this significant anniversary with achieving a new quality of relations – today, Russia and China view each other as priority partners and invariably adhere to the principles of mutually respectful, equal and trustful cooperation. We support each other with regard to key issues affecting the respective fundamental interests.
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Strategic coordination in the international arena remains a key component of the Russian-Chinese partnership amid the growing international tensions. Our foreign policy tandem, held together by a broad commonality of interests as well as coinciding or similar approaches to key issues on the present-day agenda, plays a major stabilising role in global affairs.
☝️ The two countries are strengthening cooperation on multilateral platforms, primarily the Unite Nations and the UN Security Council, as well as #BRICS, #SCO, #G20, and #APEC.
<...>
The Russian-Chinese strategic tandem is gaining status, and this opens up new horizons for us in terms of stronger sovereignty, economic growth, and prosperity of both countries.
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📺 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on the sidelines of the 79th Session.
📍 New York, September 25, 2024
💬 The formation of a multilateral world requires upgrading of the international governance architecture, if we want to build a more just and democratic world order based on the enduring principles of the UN Charter in their entirety and interconnection.
#G20, as a leading economic forum, can give a powerful boost to these objective processes that are dictated by life itself. We believe that the G20 should strictly adhere to its mandate and not delve into issues of peace and security and other universal problems, which the UN is here to deal with. It is important that the activities of our platform are strictly based on the principle of consensus.
At the G20 summit in New Delhi in 2023, we promised to strengthen the voice of developing countries in collective decision-making. It is necessary to translate these promises into concrete actions. The reform of international institutions, which must be considered as global public goods, should be carried out taking into account the interests of new growing centres of global development. The current conditions show that there have been significant changes in the balance of economic leaders.
📈 Two years ago, BRICS member countries surpassed the G7 in terms of real GDP. According to forecasts, the ten BRICS members will produce about 37% of the world’s output, while the G7 group will fall to 27% or even lower.
At the same time, we can see the African continent and other regions of the Global South and East quickly rising. Russia is actively reorienting its trade to their markets. This includes the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
🌐Innovative multilateral formats such as #BRICS (where Russia presides in 2024), the SCO, the EAEU, ASEAN, the African Union, and CELAC are becoming increasingly important.
Projects designed to align integration efforts, such as Russia’s flagship Greater Eurasian Partnership initiative, are picking up momentum.
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A tangible progress has been achieved in the context of efforts to de-dollarise the international financial and economic system. In particular, the share of national currencies in Russia’s settlements with the SCO and EAEU countries has exceeded 90%. Russia and its BRICS partners have achieved an indicator equal to 65%, and this figure grows. The share of the dollar in the BRICS payments pattern is currently below 29%.
<...>
🤷♂️ Nevertheless, certain global mechanisms are still in the West’s hands, and it tends to abuse them. A matter of particular concern are the attempts on the part of the United States and its allies to impose a confrontational agenda on international organisations in order to make them the vehicles of unilateral restrictions, plunder, impoundment of sovereign assets, trade wars and unfair competition, including in the name of environmentalism and climate.
All of these are clear manifestations of neocolonialism. Over the past ten years, the collective West has introduced more than 21,000 illegal restrictions against Russia alone. Their extraterritorial use – and this is an even more odious, illegitimate, raider-style approach – is primarily affecting the poorest countries and destitute population groups, depriving them of affordable energy, food and fertiliser.
<...>
Another topical task is combat the predominance and influence of Western states’ citizens who occupy top positions in international secretariats.
🇺🇳 A reform of the global governance system should heed the intransient central role of the UN in the system of international relations. The UN Charter and international law should not be substituted by any behind-the-scenes "rules".
<...>
☝️ We should be guided by a striving to achieve genuine multilateralism, the main guarantee of strategic stability, indivisible security and an open and non-discriminatory economy.
Full transcript
Excerpts from Alexander Babakov's speech at the plenary session of theInter-Parliamentary Speakers' Conference:
🔸️The policy of the so-called Western world toward the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region — accompanied by the consolidation of NATO's presence and the formation of new military-political blocks — leads to greater instability and hinders the establishment of a just system of international relations based on the principles of international law and mutual respect;
🔸️The #SCO, #BRICS, #ASEAN and the Eurasian Economic Union (#EAEU) promote a unifying, peaceful agenda;
🔸The United Nations—which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year — remains the cornerstone of the modern system of international relations. The #UN is a bastion of multilateralism and the primary mechanism for addressing contemporary challenges, such as armed conflicts, poverty, hunger, climate change, terrorism, and inequality between states;
🔸 The UN is currently in crisis. The disappointment in the UN seems to stem from overly high expectations that fail to consider the fact that the UN's effectiveness hinges on the political will, negotiating ability and vision of its member states—qualities that are lacking in our time. The crisis engulfing the United Nations is rooted in the selfish approach of a small group of Western countries, driven by their desire to maintain their "reign" over the world;
🔸Russia will continue to seek a fair and sustainable architecture for international relations, based on the UN and strict adherence to the principles of its Charter in their entirety, comprehensiveness and interconnection.
✨️ On February 9, Ambassador Albert P. Khorev participated in a seminar titled "The Legacyof Russian Diplomacy: Current Statusand Prospects for Pakistan-Russia Relations,” hosted by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The event was timed to coincide with #DiplomatsDay and featured an exhibition highlighting the key milestones in the development of Russian diplomacy.
In his speech, Ambassador Khorev provided a detailed overview of the pivotal events that have shaped the Russian diplomatic service and the individuals who have played a prominent role in it.
❗️Albert P. Khorev highlighted Russia's current foreign policy priorities: upholding the principles and goals of the UN Charter, forming a multipolar world order based on sovereign equality, combating neo-Nazism and neo-colonialism, preserving the memory of World War II, and preventing the rewriting of its history.
🤝 The Ambassador noted that, from 1970 to 1990, the Soviet Union provided Pakistan with assistance in developing its industry. This included the construction of the Pakistan Steel Mills and the Guddu, Jamshoro, and Muzaffargarh thermal power plants.
🇷🇺🇵🇰 Since the 2000s, when Russia, the successor state to the USSR, began pursuing an active, multi-vector foreign policy and increased cooperation with countries in the Global South, the two countries have established a dynamic political dialogue and regular high-level contacts.
The Russian Ambassador praised the two countries' coordinated efforts on the international stage, particularly at the #UN and #SCO. He emphasized Russia and Pakistan's commitment to combating international terrorism, extremism, neo-colonialism, neo-Nazism, Islamophobia, and discrimination based on nationality or religion.
The Ambassador also noted the potential for cooperation between Islamabad and the #BRICS New Development Bank. Given the recent establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Armenia, he suggested exploring cooperation with the #EAEU as well.
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🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on the G20’s objectives in 2025, a discussion of planned results of South Africa’s Presidency and an assessment of the forum’s activities (Johannesburg, February 21, 2025)
💬 In conditions of global economic fragmentation, a dialogue on global issues in the #G20 remains in high demand as never before. We commend the Republic of South Africa’s substantial preparations for the forum and the topicality of chosen thematic priorities. We are particularly impressed with the emphasis on a search for a common denominator in the interests of combining efforts to facilitate sustained growth and development.
We still have a long way to go for attaining the desired results, and the overall background for joint work in conditions of geopolitical confrontation, that is being incited, remains unfavourable. The statistics are well-known: We are lagging far behind a schedule for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals until 2030, and only 17% of them are on track. <...>
Historical experience shows that it is impossible to independently cope with common challenges and threats. This is why the G20 was established in 2008 at the level of national leaders. At that time, it was necessary to put out the fire of a global financial crisis in emergency circumstances. It became possible to stabilise markets for a while.
❗️ However, we are now witnessing an entire cascade of intertwined crises. Behind them are armed conflicts that have been unleashed and inspired by the West, trade, technological and hybrid wars, the demolition of the international trade system, the weaponisation of the dollar that has turned into a tool for manipulations. <...>
☝️ Nevertheless, the modern world is being transformed drastically and becoming truly multipolar. The 500-year period of Western domination is irreversibly becoming a thing of the past. It is necessary to find the strength and to accept this objective reality. The international community does not want to be hostage to unilateral decisions of former sovereigns. This is particularly obvious today when we are celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the war against Nazism and the 65th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples as a starting point of acquiring independence by Africa, Asia and the entire Global South.
In 2022, #BRICSconfidently outpaced the G7 in terms of GDP. Today, BRICS and the G7 account for 37 and 29 percent of the global GDP, respectively. <...>
During Russia’s #BRICS Chairmanship at the Kazan Summit in 2024, the participants adopted multiple promising decisions to launch non-discriminatory, independent of anyone’s whim mechanisms stimulating investment and trade, with due consideration for Africa’s special needs.
The neo-liberal circles in the West regard the objective process of burgeoning multipolarity as a challenge rather than an opportunity. They are putting an absurd stake on a confrontation, on inflicting a “strategic defeat” on rivals. In so doing, they use neocolonialist practices <...>
Under these circumstances, G20 retains its status as a useful venue for aligning the interests of states with different strategies and development levels, this primarily due to the efforts of BRICS countries. <...>
🤝We share South Africa’s plans to survey the G20 activities over past years. We hope that the result will enable us to reaffirm our commitment to de-politicised interaction based on the unshakeable principle of consensus with an eye to implementing the task to ensure a sustainable and comprehensive economic growth, a task set back in 2009. This would be a worthy result of Africa’s first ever G20 Summit.
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