Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speech at a meeting of heads of security agencies and intelligence services of the CIS member states, Moscow, September 30, 2022

Mr Naryshkin, audience members,

The annual meetings of the heads of security agencies and intelligence services of the CIS states clearly show the high level of cooperation, trust and mutual understanding among our states.

Today, your common efforts are more relevant than ever. The US-led collective West has no plans to abandon its course of global domination or to grow at the expense of the interests of other members of the international community. President Vladimir Putin spoke about this in detail at the meeting with you yesterday. Washington is using the concept of a rules-based order as an ideological cover for its aggressive designs. It is openly neo-colonial in nature and relies on dividing the world into a “select group,” a “golden billion” and other countries, which are supposed to follow in the wake of Western policy to the detriment of their fundamental national interests. Clearly, this approach runs counter to the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the countries that are interested in a just world order and a genuine democratisation of international relations.

You are perfectly aware of the fact that the “divide and conquer” philosophy is being widely used by the West with regard to the former Soviet countries. Their goal is clear: to fragment the post-Soviet space even more, to pit our countries and peoples against each other, to impose schemes of interaction that are not beneficial to us, and to push us to the backwoods of global processes.

Transforming Ukraine into an anti-Russia foothold is the most striking result of this destructive course. Many years of efforts went into establishing a neo-Nazi and Russophobic regime in Kiev and flooding its armed forces and nationalist groups with modern weapons. Washington, London and Brussels are not hiding their plans to remain recklessly invested in fighting Russia “on the battlefield” using the hands and lives of Ukrainians, who are seen as entirely expendable.

As they pursue their mindless course of cancelling Russia (as they say), the Anglo-Saxons are succeeding in the unconditional subordination of the entire collective West, including NATO, and the EU, which has lost any ambition for strategic autonomy and is incurring enormous losses from the policy the United States has embroiled it in.

The West’s irresponsible policies in the Eurasian space are not limited to Ukraine. We remember the attempted colour revolution in Belarus two years ago. The wise people of that fraternal country refused to be deceived. It remains clear, however, that not a single CIS country is immune to this kind of interference in its domestic affairs.

This can be clearly seen from the defiant actions of the United States, NATO and the EU in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Colleagues,

The rapidly evolving international situation dictates the need to build up honest, equal and mutually beneficial cooperation between our countries in order to strengthen regional and national security, among other things. We note the effective activities of CIS bodies like the Council of Ministers of the Interior, the Anti-Terrorist Centre, the Council of Commanders of the Border Troops and your conference.

In order to be able to effectively respond to common external threats and challenges, including the threats emanating from Afghanistan, we find the deepening cooperation within the CSTO to be of great important. The effective actions of the CSTO peacekeeping forces in January to assist Kazakhstan in stabilising the domestic political situation amid foreign-supported riots are clear evidence of the organisation’s maturity and high dependability.

The possibility of using CSTO observers to help create a favourable environment for moving the agreements between the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia forward, in particular on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the normalisation of relations between Baku and Yerevan, including the signing of the appropriate agreements, is now being discussed. I think CIS support would also be welcome.

Biological safety deserves special attention amid new challenges and threats. As confirmed by the “finds” discovered during the special military operation, the undeclared military biological programmes that are being implemented (or were being implemented) in Ukraine with Pentagon support posed a direct and major threat to Russia and other countries. It is no coincidence that the Americans did everything possible to cover up the traces of their experiments in the now liberated territories. When we first discovered those laboratories, Victoria Nuland, speaking at the hearings in Congress, openly stated the risks of information on Pentagon lab activities getting into the hands of Russian specialists. So, there are things to hide. There is reason to believe that biological weapon components were created in the immediate vicinity of Russia’s borders and mechanisms were worked out to destabilise the epidemiological situation.

At the UN Security Council, we demanded, under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, that the United States provide the necessary clarifications and ensure the full transparency and legitimacy of its biological programmes around the world. We expect a response.

Fighting illegal migration while adapting the mechanisms for regulating labour relations to the needs of the socioeconomic development of our countries remains a major task for cooperation between law enforcement agencies and foreign policy and intelligence agencies.

Taking into account the complex nature of common challenges and threats, we consider it necessary to keep up our efforts to improve interaction within the CIS, as well as the CSTO and the SCO, and also to develop coordinated actions in similar areas between these entities. Today, they stand as successful examples of equal, practical cooperation and genuine multilateral diplomacy. All these organisations have established relations with the UN Secretariat. It is important to strengthen this link in the context of our common work to develop integration processes in Greater Eurasia.

Colleagues,

We, and well-coordinated work in all areas, define the prospects for common associations and the ability to neutralise any attempt at external pressure, and at the same time, strengthen regional security and ensure our peoples’ prosperity.