During his June 24-25 visit to Belarus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a series of comprehensive meetings with Belarus Foreign Minister Sergei Aleinik, with President Aleksandr Lukashenko, addressed and with other government and institutional representatives, at the center of which was the subject of a needed new Eurasian security architecture. Lavrov and Aleinik signed a joint statement entitled “the Main Foreign Policy Tasks of the Union Integration of Russia and Belarus.” In his June 24 joint press conference with Aleinik discussing their statement, Lavrov condemned actions of Western countries which led to the Ukraine crisis and the final collapse of Europe’s security system “based on Euro-Atlantic principles.” He specified that the new architecture must be “of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia, inviting all countries in our common continent to cooperate in this process.”
In the document, the two foreign ministers discuss “promoting the formation of a new sustainable international security architecture as one of the key foreign policy objectives. The parameters of such a system should be the product of open and inclusive negotiations on the rules of conflict-free coexistence based on the principles of equality and indivisibility of security, as well as recognition of the realities of multipolarity and mandatory mutual consideration of the interests of all parties involved.”
The document “strongly condemns the actions of Western states aimed at escalating the military-political situation in Europe” and confirms the two nations’ “readiness for a political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on the basis of full consideration of the interests of Belarus and Russia.”
