On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Russian government daily Rossyiskaya Gazeta published a statement today by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov under the headline “Russia and China: Partnership and Friendship Forged by Time.” Posted to the Foreign Ministry website, Lavrov’s article emphasizes that “the global political and economic focus is irreversibly shifting to Eurasia, which is home to new centers of power, which draft and make global decisions…. Moscow and Beijing are working effectively to integrate large-scale projects, such as the Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. We consider this collaborative effort a significant step towards realizing President Putin’s vision for creating a Greater Eurasian Partnership….”
Lavrov pointed out, however, that peaceful development and prosperity across Eurasia aren’t likely to happen unless reliable security is provided to the countries of the region. How is that to be achieved? “Since the security system in Europe and the Euro-Atlantic region has been fully discredited by United States and other NATO countries, we suggest deploying serious collaborative efforts to build a new Eurasian security architecture based on the regional- solutions-to-regional-problems principle, anchored in equality and indivisibility, and grounded in the existing multilateral associations within Eurasia. We are pleased to note that President Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative aligns with Russia’s approaches in this regard.”
