🇺🇳 The Russian Federation completed its Presidency in the United Nations Security Council on July 31. Its packed agenda revolved around three central events, with the first two of them attended by FM Sergey Lavrov.
On July 16, we held a high-level open debate titled “Multilateral cooperation in the interest of a more just, democratic and sustainable world order,” which reaffirmed the need to hold detailed discussions dealing with the underpinnings of the emerging multipolar world order, the objective to reinforce a UN-centred system of international relations, as well as the need to carry out a comprehensive review of the root causes of present-day conflicts and to consolidate our efforts in order to overcome them. The fact that the Global Majority tends to distrust the infamous Western concept of a rules-based world order was also mentioned during the debate.
On July 17, the Security Council held a quarterly ministerial-level debate on the agenda item titled “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.” During this meeting, participants discussed the situation in the region with all its tension, while placing a special emphasis on the escalating violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict zone for finding ways out of this unprecedented crisis. In addition to this, the UNSC held separate meetings on July 26 and 31 on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the assassination of the Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
On July 19, the UNSC held a debate (https://russiaun.ru/en/news/190724_vershininunsc) titled “Cooperation between the United Nations and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (#CSTO), the Commonwealth of Independent States (#CIS), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (#SCO).” In his remarks, Deputy FM Sergey Vershinin stressed the importance for the UN to work closer with constructive regional organisations. <...>
In addition to this, Russia’s UNSC Presidency included all the events as part of the mandate-reporting cycle.
👉 The Middle East bloc included meetings on Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
👉 The African agenda covered discussions of the situation in West Africa, the Sahara and Sahel region, and the DR Congo.
👉 The council also touched upon peacebuilding efforts in Columbia and the start of deploying the Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti.
👉 We exchanged views on the activities of the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia and the Cyprus settlement.
❗️The Ukraine crisis remained high on the agenda. On July 9, Western countries convened a Security Council meeting in connection with the tragic incident involving a children’s hospital in Kiev. During the debate, the Russian delegation refuted accusations by its opponents and shared evidence demonstrating that the Ukrainian air defence systems were to blame for the incident. On July 25, Russia initiated a UNSC meeting to discuss the unrelenting flow of Western weapons into Ukraine, which delays a settlement in this conflict and leads to more victims.
The Security Council adopted four resolutions in July:
✅ on focusing the CAR arms embargo on illegal armed groups;
✅ extending the mandates for the UN Mission to support the Hodeidah Agreement and the UN Integrated Office in Haiti;
✅ regarding the UN Focal Point on delisting-related matters and re-establishing the Informal Working Group of the Security Council on General UNSC Sanctions Issues.
🇺🇳 Russia went to great lengths to enable the Security Council to be effective and responsive in its work. We encouraged our colleagues within the Council to come up with collective responses when dealing with challenges to peace and security, while seeking guidance from a holistic view of the purposes and principles set forth in the UN Charter and their inter-connected nature.
⚡️Statement of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization regarding the Situation around the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (#SCO) express serious concern over the developments in the Middle East and the military strikes on the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The SCO Member States consider the use of force as unacceptable and advocate for the resolution of existing differences exclusively by peaceful means, based on dialogue, mutual respect, and taking into account the legitimate interests of all parties, in accordance with the norms of the international law and the principles of the UN Charter.
The SCO Member States underscore the need to ensure sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity of Iran, and call on all parties to exercise restraint and to refrain from actions that could aggravate the situation.
The SCO Member States strongly urge the United Nations and the UN Security Council to take immediate measures to counteract the undermining of international peace and security.
The SCO Member States express sincere condolences to the families of those murdered as a result of the attack and declare their solidarity with and support for the Government and the people of Iran.
2 March, 2026
📰Article by Russia' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ‘The Helsinki Act’s 50th anniversary: Expectations, reality, and future’
Published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on August 1, 2025
✍️ Marking the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and WWII in 2025 serves as an occasion for us to recall and reaffirm the importance of peace which came at such a high cost for our forefathers. We must also be mindful of how fragile this peace architecture is. In fact, its integrity hinges upon the ability of countries and their people to engage in coordinated collective action.
Back in 1945, the year of Victory, major powers realised the need to overcome their differences for the sake of the humankind as a whole. This paved the way for establishing the United Nations as one of the key derivatives of this vision. In fact, the purposes and principles set out in the UN Charter remain relevant to this day and are in step with the reality of an emerging multipolar world order.
But there is another international event which happened precisely 50 years ago and is worth commemorating. This is when the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was signed. It became a landmark event in consolidating the post-war architecture based on the framework resulting from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.
☝️ Those camping on unfriendly positions towards Russia seek to diminish and sweep under the carpet the fact that our country, which was the USSR at that time, played a leading role in the Helsinki process, while also distorting the objectives the Soviet leaders were pursuing. We are facing groundless and unappealing accusations of undermining the European security framework, and politicians in the EU and NATO have made no secret of their intention to re-write the outcomes of WWII and do not shy away from concocting barbaric fakes for that purpose.
Key points:
• Western countries have breached all the OSCE agreements on arms control and confidence-building measures. Russia has appealed to the conscience of Western elites more than once, inviting them to coordinate reliable security guarantees based on fundamental commitment adopted within the OSCE.
• Europe is deeply immersed in Russophobia, and its militarisation is essentially becoming uncontrollable. There are more than enough facts of this. <...> This brings historical events to mind: with their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich.
• In recent years, the West has openly shown absolute contempt for the OSCE’s principles & embarked on the path of suppressing rivals through economic pressure, including unlawful unilateral measures against Russia, Belarus and any other country that strives to defend its legitimate national interests. The OSCE marked a decisive end to practical cooperation between the East and the West.
• The scale of accumulated OSCE problems is immense. Burdened by them, the Organisation has been side-lined in international affairs. The Vienna platform no longer offers space for cooperation or security. The architects of the Helsinki Final Act did not envisage such a future for the pan-European process. It is high time to consider whether such an Organisation has any reason to persist.
• Today, the ideas of sovereign equality of states and their mutually respectful dialogue – strangled in the OSCE – are being realised through multilateral cooperation projects within the CSTO, the CIS, #SCO, and other regional frameworks across Eurasia.
• As a strategic objective, Russia envisions forming a flexible and resilient architecture of equal & indivisible security and cooperation in Eurasia, capable of addressing contemporary challenges.
• There will be no future for the OSCE if NATO and EU countries do away with the consensus rule and continue using this platform with its headquarters in Vienna as their private mouthpiece for spreading shameless propaganda campaigns to demonise Russia & any other parties who break ranks, while backing their underlings in Kiev.
Read in full
@RusEmbMalta Press release:
📰Article by Russia' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ‘The Helsinki Act’s 50th anniversary: Expectations, reality, and future’
Published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on August 1, 2025
✍️ Marking the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and WWII in 2025 serves as an occasion for us to recall and reaffirm the importance of peace which came at such a high cost for our forefathers. We must also be mindful of how fragile this peace architecture is. In fact, its integrity hinges upon the ability of countries and their people to engage in coordinated collective action.
Back in 1945, the year of Victory, major powers realised the need to overcome their differences for the sake of the humankind as a whole. This paved the way for establishing the United Nations as one of the key derivatives of this vision. In fact, the purposes and principles set out in the UN Charter remain relevant to this day and are in step with the reality of an emerging multipolar world order.
But there is another international event which happened precisely 50 years ago and is worth commemorating. This is when the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was signed. It became a landmark event in consolidating the post-war architecture based on the framework resulting from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.
☝️ Those camping on unfriendly positions towards Russia seek to diminish and sweep under the carpet the fact that our country, which was the USSR at that time, played a leading role in the Helsinki process, while also distorting the objectives the Soviet leaders were pursuing. We are facing groundless and unappealing accusations of undermining the European security framework, and politicians in the EU and NATO have made no secret of their intention to re-write the outcomes of WWII and do not shy away from concocting barbaric fakes for that purpose.
Key points:
🔹Western countries have breached all the OSCE agreements on arms control and confidence-building measures. Russia has appealed to the conscience of Western elites more than once, inviting them to coordinate reliable security guarantees based on fundamental commitment adopted within the OSCE.
🔹 Europe is deeply immersed in Russophobia, and its militarisation is essentially becoming uncontrollable. There are more than enough facts of this. <...> This brings historical events to mind: with their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich.
🔹 In recent years, the West has openly shown absolute contempt for the OSCE’s principles & embarked on the path of suppressing rivals through economic pressure, including unlawful unilateral measures against Russia, Belarus and any other country that strives to defend its legitimate national interests.
🔹 The scale of accumulated OSCE problems is immense. Burdened by them, the Organisation has been side-lined in international affairs. The Vienna platform no longer offers space for cooperation or security. The architects of the Helsinki Final Act did not envisage such a future for the pan-European process. It is high time to consider whether such an Organisation has any reason to persist.
🔹 Today, the ideas of sovereign equality of states and their mutually respectful dialogue – strangled in the OSCE – are being realised through multilateral cooperation projects within the CSTO, the CIS, #SCO, and other regional frameworks across Eurasia.
🔹 As a strategic objective, Russia envisions forming a flexible and resilient architecture of equal & indivisible security and cooperation in Eurasia, capable of addressing contemporary challenges.
🔹 There will be no future for the OSCE if NATO and EU countries do away with the consensus rule and continue using this platform with its headquarters in Vienna as their private mouthpiece for spreading shameless propaganda campaigns to demonise Russia & any other parties who break ranks, while backing their underlings in Kiev.
Read in full.
📰Article by Russia' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ‘The Helsinki Act’s 50th anniversary: Expectations, reality, and future’
Published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on August 1, 2025
✍️ Marking the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and WWII in 2025 serves as an occasion for us to recall and reaffirm the importance of peace which came at such a high cost for our forefathers. We must also be mindful of how fragile this peace architecture is. In fact, its integrity hinges upon the ability of countries and their people to engage in coordinated collective action.
Back in 1945, the year of Victory, major powers realised the need to overcome their differences for the sake of the humankind as a whole. This paved the way for establishing the United Nations as one of the key derivatives of this vision. In fact, the purposes and principles set out in the UN Charter remain relevant to this day and are in step with the reality of an emerging multipolar world order.
But there is another international event which happened precisely 50 years ago and is worth commemorating. This is when the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was signed. It became a landmark event in consolidating the post-war architecture based on the framework resulting from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.
☝️ Those camping on unfriendly positions towards Russia seek to diminish and sweep under the carpet the fact that our country, which was the USSR at that time, played a leading role in the Helsinki process, while also distorting the objectives the Soviet leaders were pursuing. We are facing groundless and unappealing accusations of undermining the European security framework, and politicians in the EU and NATO have made no secret of their intention to re-write the outcomes of WWII and do not shy away from concocting barbaric fakes for that purpose.
Key points:
• Western countries have breached all the OSCE agreements on arms control and confidence-building measures. Russia has appealed to the conscience of Western elites more than once, inviting them to coordinate reliable security guarantees based on fundamental commitment adopted within the OSCE.
• Europe is deeply immersed in Russophobia, and its militarisation is essentially becoming uncontrollable. There are more than enough facts of this. <...> This brings historical events to mind: with their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich.
• In recent years, the West has openly shown absolute contempt for the OSCE’s principles & embarked on the path of suppressing rivals through economic pressure, including unlawful unilateral measures against Russia, Belarus and any other country that strives to defend its legitimate national interests. The OSCE marked a decisive end to practical cooperation between the East and the West.
• The scale of accumulated OSCE problems is immense. Burdened by them, the Organisation has been side-lined in international affairs. The Vienna platform no longer offers space for cooperation or security. The architects of the Helsinki Final Act did not envisage such a future for the pan-European process. It is high time to consider whether such an Organisation has any reason to persist.
• Today, the ideas of sovereign equality of states and their mutually respectful dialogue – strangled in the OSCE – are being realised through multilateral cooperation projects within the CSTO, the CIS, #SCO, and other regional frameworks across Eurasia.
• As a strategic objective, Russia envisions forming a flexible and resilient architecture of equal & indivisible security and cooperation in Eurasia, capable of addressing contemporary challenges.
• There will be no future for the OSCE if NATO and EU countries do away with the consensus rule and continue using this platform with its headquarters in Vienna as their private mouthpiece for spreading shameless propaganda campaigns to demonise Russia & any other parties who break ranks, while backing their underlings in Kiev.
Read in full
📰Article by Russia' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ‘The Helsinki Act’s 50th anniversary: Expectations, reality, and future’
Published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on August 1, 2025
✍️ Marking the 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and WWII in 2025 serves as an occasion for us to recall and reaffirm the importance of peace which came at such a high cost for our forefathers. We must also be mindful of how fragile this peace architecture is. In fact, its integrity hinges upon the ability of countries and their people to engage in coordinated collective action.
Back in 1945, the year of Victory, major powers realised the need to overcome their differences for the sake of the humankind as a whole. This paved the way for establishing the United Nations as one of the key derivatives of this vision. In fact, the purposes and principles set out in the UN Charter remain relevant to this day and are in step with the reality of an emerging multipolar world order.
But there is another international event which happened precisely 50 years ago and is worth commemorating. This is when the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was signed. It became a landmark event in consolidating the post-war architecture based on the framework resulting from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.
☝️ Those camping on unfriendly positions towards Russia seek to diminish and sweep under the carpet the fact that our country, which was the USSR at that time, played a leading role in the Helsinki process, while also distorting the objectives the Soviet leaders were pursuing. We are facing groundless and unappealing accusations of undermining the European security framework, and politicians in the EU and NATO have made no secret of their intention to re-write the outcomes of WWII and do not shy away from concocting barbaric fakes for that purpose.
Key points:
• Western countries have breached all the OSCE agreements on arms control and confidence-building measures. Russia has appealed to the conscience of Western elites more than once, inviting them to coordinate reliable security guarantees based on fundamental commitment adopted within the OSCE.
• Europe is deeply immersed in Russophobia, and its militarisation is essentially becoming uncontrollable. There are more than enough facts of this. <...> This brings historical events to mind: with their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich.
• In recent years, the West has openly shown absolute contempt for the OSCE’s principles & embarked on the path of suppressing rivals through economic pressure, including unlawful unilateral measures against Russia, Belarus and any other country that strives to defend its legitimate national interests. The OSCE marked a decisive end to practical cooperation between the East and the West.
• The scale of accumulated OSCE problems is immense. Burdened by them, the Organisation has been side-lined in international affairs. The Vienna platform no longer offers space for cooperation or security. The architects of the Helsinki Final Act did not envisage such a future for the pan-European process. It is high time to consider whether such an Organisation has any reason to persist.
• Today, the ideas of sovereign equality of states and their mutually respectful dialogue – strangled in the OSCE – are being realised through multilateral cooperation projects within the CSTO, the CIS, #SCO, and other regional frameworks across Eurasia.
• As a strategic objective, Russia envisions forming a flexible and resilient architecture of equal & indivisible security and cooperation in Eurasia, capable of addressing contemporary challenges.
• There will be no future for the OSCE if NATO and EU countries do away with the consensus rule and continue using this platform with its headquarters in Vienna as their private mouthpiece for spreading shameless propaganda campaigns to demonise Russia & any other parties who break ranks, while backing their underlings in Kiev.
Read in full
🎙 Russia's President Vladimir Putintook part in a SCO Heads of State Council Meeting in Astana (July 4, 2024)
💬 First of all, I want to greet everybody and, of course, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, following the accession of the Republic of Belarus as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Russia gives high priority to partnership within the #SCO. We can state with satisfaction that this cooperation continues to develop consistently based on the principles of equality, consideration for each other’s interests, respect for the cultural and civilisational diversity, and cooperation in addressing important security issues.
<...>
Our countries are increasingly using national currencies for mutual settlements. For example, the share of national currencies in Russia's transactions with SCO members has exceeded 92 percent in the first four months of this year. I would like to reiterate Russia's proposal to establish a payment and settlement system within the SCO.
Regular meetings between our economic ministers, finance ministers and central bank governors are making a substantial contribution to the development of trade and investment relations in the SCO space.
<...>
Naturally, ensuring security within the Member States and along the external borders has always been a key focus of the SCO’s activities. Today, we have made decisions to upgrade the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure into a comprehensive centre that will address all security threats, as well as to establish an anti-drug centre in Dushanbe. The three-year cooperation programme we have approved will further strengthen our efforts to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism.
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🎙 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovanswers a question from the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin programme (Astana, July 4, 2024)
Question: How important is it that Belarus has joined us in the #SCO?
💬 Sergey Lavrov: Belarus is part of the Union State. We are interested in the Union State taking part in all international processes as a single front. I believe we are going in the right direction.
@RusEmbMalta press release
The President of Russia Vladimir Putin paid a two-day working visit to Astana to participate in a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization Heads of States Council (July 3-4, 2024)
Vladimir Putin held a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the #SCO summit: with President of Mongolia Ukhnaagiin Khurelsükh, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif, President of Turkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of China Xi Jinping, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Acting President of Iran Mohammad Mokhber, and Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
Following its results, the participants signed the Astana Declaration and adopted and signed a number of other documents. They also held a meeting in the SCO Plus format.
In conclusion of his visit, Vladimir Putin answered media questions.
Read in full:
🎙Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to media questions following the SCO Foreign Ministers Council meeting(Astana, May 21, 2024)
Key talking points:
▪️ At a group meeting of the heads of delegations with President of Kazakhstan and during the Ministerial Council meeting, we expressed our deepest condolences and solidarity with the Iranian people, as well as confidence that Tehran will continue its foreign policy, including with regard to its active participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
• The #SCO remains one of the supporting pillars of the multipolar world order. It is well positioned to become a driving force behind transforming Eurasia into a single continental space of peace, stability, mutual trust and progress.
• Security can be reliably ensured only by the Eurasian countries themselves, without the intervention of extra-regional forces. We observe such attempts on the part of the United States, the European Union and NATO, which strive to assume responsibility for everything that happens in the region.
• We are all aware of the importance of intensifying the work of the SCO, considering its weight and role in Eurasia, and its partners, including the OSCE, the CIS, the EAEU, and ASEAN.
• Developing common approaches to ensuring Eurasian security and cooperation by the countries of this continent is a crucial goal. We underscored that the SCO could well catalyse these processes with the involvement of other partners in the region.
• The SCO has two observers and 14 dialogue partners. Recently, Laos and Algeria have applied for partner status. We discussed improving the efficiency of interaction with these countries within the SCO Plus format.
🇧🇾 Starting from the July summit, Belarus will become a full-fledged SCO member. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will take part in all events of the Astana summit without exception. The Belarusian minister attended our discussion.
🇲🇳Mongolia is the obvious next candidate for SCO membership.
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🗓 On May 20-21, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovtook part in the Foreign Ministers Council meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation member-countries.
The participants focused on the organisation’s activities in the context of preparations for the meeting of the SCO Heads of State Council meeting in Astana on July 3-4. They also discussed draft documents to be presented for the leaders’ consideration.
The participants will reflect their coordinated approaches to the SCO’s further development and current global and regional issues in the Astana Declaration.
The admission of Belarus will be an important step towards strengthening the #SCO. The Ministers endorsed the relevant draft decisions of the Heads of State Council.
They also coordinated proposals of the SCO Foreign Ministers Council on comprehensive improvement of the organisation’s activities in the context of current geopolitical realities.
They adopted draft leadership statements and conceptual documents as a foundation for promoting cooperation in energy, transport, logistics and environmental protection.
During a detailed exchange of views on key regional and international issues, the Ministers discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip and the Middle East as a whole, and, in part, settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
They paid special attention to the SCO’s efforts to facilitate stabilization in Afghanistan, considering the importance of this factor for the security of the SCO space.
🤝 FM Lavrov also had a number of bilateral meetings.
🎙 President of Russia Vladimir Putin's speech at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Heads of State Council.
💬 President Putin: We believe it is important that all members of the association share their approaches to the situation in global politics, security, the social and economic spheres.
At the same time, our organisation is strongly committed to creating a truly just and multipolar world order, an order based on international law and common principles of mutually respectful cooperation between sovereign states with the central, coordinating role of the United Nations.
Our organisation plays an increasingly important role in international affairs and brings a substantial contribution to maintaining peace and stability, ensuring sustainable economic growth of its member states and developing ties between peoples.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues in the #SCO member states who have expressed their support for the Russian leadership in defending the constitutional order, lives and security of its citizens. We greatly appreciate this.
Russia has been in favour of strengthening cooperation between the member states in investment, banking and finance, as well as in industry, energy, transport and logistics, agriculture, telecommunications, digitalisation and high tech.
Counterterrorism, countering extremism and religious radicalism, curbing drug trafficking and other types of smuggling, combating militant formations must remain a priority of the SCO.
It is a matter of satisfaction that the authority and influence of our association continue to improve, and other countries and international structures show interest in its activity. They trust us and want to be friends and work together.
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