Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the Sixth Round of Russia-GCC strategic dialogue, Moscow, July 10, 2023

Colleagues, friends,

I am pleased to welcome the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, as well as state ministers for foreign affairs of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and the State Secretary of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council in Moscow.

I am grateful to you for responding to our invitation to hold the sixth meeting of the Russia-Cooperation Council strategic dialogue in our capital. Moscow is hosting the event for the second time. The previous one took place in 2016. After that, we held our meetings in the Gulf region.

In the 12 years since the launch of this format, the strategic dialogue has proven to be an effective mechanism for discussing key regional and global issues and ways to develop economic and cultural cooperation between our countries. I hope that today’s meeting will give an additional boost to the promotion of Russia’s interaction with the member states of the Council.

Our comprehensive relations continue to progress, which is reaffirmed by a significant increase in high-level and highest-level contacts over the last year. The tone is set by President of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council states. In my turn, I value our close cooperation with you personally, colleagues. Close working cooperation between our foreign ministries plays an important role. I have warm memories of fruitful discussion during the fifth round of the Strategic Dialogue in Riyadh on June 1, 2022, as well as my trips to Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The talks during your visits to Russia, as well as our conversations on the sidelines of multilateral events in third countries, including the traditional meeting with the Cooperation Council Troika in New York in September 2022, were useful.

Russia and Cooperation Council member states have all the necessary mechanisms to successfully address our common tasks, promote a mutually beneficial partnership, and transfer it to a systematic strategic foundation. Our countries’ relevant departments and business associations are taking consistent steps to expand economic ties. Despite the difficult geopolitical environment, we manage to maintain a positive trend in mutual trade. At the end of last year, trade between Russia and your countries increased by more than six percent compared to the previous year, and exceeded $11 billion. Of course, trade is not developing evenly with every country present here, but the general trends are positive. As for individual reserves within the framework of bilateral relations in the trade and economic sphere, we will elaborate on them during today’s meetings.

I expect that we will discuss the entire range of challenges that the Middle East is facing during the plenary session, including the strategically important Gulf region. We will touch upon the creation of a regional collective security system in order to effectively counter numerous challenges and threats. Communication with representatives of the media, which we welcome here, is envisaged.

The results of our discussion will be consolidated in a joint statement, which we plan to adopt today. I would like to thank our experts for their work on coordinating this document, as well as the draft joint action plan.