In comments to the press in Cambodia on Nov. 13, following his participation in the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov let loose against NATO’s bellicose plans for Asia. “NATO no longer says that it is a purely defensive alliance. It had this character, when the U.S.S.R. and the Warsaw Pact were in existence. NATO has pushed its ‘defense line’ forward several times, closer to Russia’s border. (The Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union no longer exist; it’s unclear who they were defending themselves against.) It was announced at the NATO summit in Madrid last summer that they had a ‘global responsibility’ and that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions was indivisible,” Lavrov said. From the ASEAN and East Asia Summit in Cambodia, Lavrov then traveled to Indonesia for the G20 meeting, where he will be Russia’s top representative.
Washington and its NATO allies “are trying to lay claim to the Asia-Pacific space,” and are creating formats which “rival the inclusive structures created around ASEAN, envisage the militarization of this region with an obvious focus on containing China and Russian interests in the Asia-Pacific region.”
