Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s talks with Foreign Minister of Madagascar Alice N’Diaye

Photo: MFA

Press release on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s talks with Foreign Minister of Madagascar Alice N’Diaye.

On June 19, in Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Madagascar Alice Ndiaye, who is currently in Russia on a working visit.

The parties comprehensively reviewed the current state and prospects for the traditionally friendly Russian-Malagasy relations. Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to deepening political dialogue and broadening collaboration across the trade and economic, educational, cultural, and other spheres. The importance of intensifying joint efforts to enhance the legal framework underpinning bilateral relations was underscored.

In their discussion of pressing issues on the global and regional agenda, the two sides highlighted a convergence of Russia’s and Madagascar’s fundamental positions in advocating the establishment of a polycentric world order and upholding the principles of justice and equality in international affairs. Both ministers expressed mutual interest in bolstering cooperation within the framework of the United Nations and other multilateral platforms. Particular emphasis was placed on preparations for the third Russia-Africa Summit, scheduled to take place in the autumn of this year, as well as on engagement with regional integration organisations in Africa.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to media questions at a joint news conference following talks with Foreign Minister of the Republic of Madagascar Alice N’Diaye.

Ladies and gentlemen, Media members,

Talks with my Malagasy colleague Alice N’Diaye were substantive and held in a friendly and candid atmosphere.

This is our first contact. Ms Minister was appointed to this position a couple of months ago. We are pleased that Minister N’Diaye was able to visit the Russian Federation soon after she took office. I am glad to make her acquaintance.

We noted the steady progress in our relations in line with the understandings reached by President Putin and President for the Re-Foundation of the Republic of Madagascar Michael Randrianirina in Moscow in February. The presidents reviewed the entire spectrum of our relations and outlined strategic goals in economic, military, military-technical, humanitarian, and educational cooperation. We discussed this in detail today. We are moving towards the goal of improving coordination in international and regional affairs, including on ongoing complex issues and crises in Africa.

We confirmed firm mutual commitment to deepening political dialogue and agreed to facilitate the expansion of inter-parliamentary ties. Friendship groups have been set up in the State Duma and in the National Assembly of Madagascar. Contacts between political parties and between representatives of relevant ministries and agencies covering all above areas have been planned.

We share the view that trade and economic cooperation must be significantly expanded. Promising opportunities lie in areas such as energy, transport, geological exploration, and the extraction and processing of natural resources.

In 2015, we concluded with the predecessors of the current Malagasy leadership an intergovernmental agreement on the use of Madagascar’s debt to the Russian Federation for financing development projects in this island nation. We have a proposal on ways to implement this document in practice. We agreed to coordinate specific and mutually acceptable ways to do so.

We are stepping up (we agreed to that as well) work on improving the legal and treaty framework of bilateral relations. Several draft agreements which clearly meet the interests of both sides are currently under discussion.

Russia is helping the Malagasy side address pressing socioeconomic challenges and train national personnel in civilian fields. We will continue to help Madagascar build its own anti-epidemic capacity. Not long ago, on June 9, our friends received from us another batch of humanitarian relief in the wake of Fytiya and Gezani cyclones that devastated the island’s eastern regions earlier this year.

We discussed prospects for utilising the capabilities of the Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Academy and MGIMO University to provide advanced training for Malagasy public servants. Today, Ms Minister met with MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov to sign a memorandum of understanding, since Madagascar is interested in internships at the Diplomatic Academy. We are fully supportive of this interest and will strive to meet our friends’ expectations.

We exchanged views on urgent regional and international issues, including our interaction at the UN and further democratisation of international relations based on honest rather than selective implementation of the full body of principles enshrined in the UN Charter, understood as an indivisible and interdependent whole.

We are interested in deepening cooperation on other multilateral platforms as well. We reaffirmed Russia’s principled position with regard to significantly increasing Africa’s role in global governance mechanisms, including the UN and its Security Council.

We highly appreciated the adoption by the UN General Assembly in December 2025 of a resolution proclaiming December 14 as International Day Against Colonialism. Importantly, among other things, this document reminds everyone about historical responsibility of former colonial powers. We reaffirm our solidarity with Africa, which was, in fact, among the main driving forces of the decolonisation process. We will continue to advocate further steps to eliminate remnants of colonial and neocolonial practices.

We will continue to expand relations with the African Union as well. We look forward to seeing the third Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow in October take these relations to a new level. We were pleased to learn that Ms Minister confirmed the participation of the President of Madagascar, Michael Randrianirina, in this summit.

In addition to the African Union, we have cooperation agreements in place with other African organisations, including the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, of which Madagascar is a member. Today we agreed that Russia’s cooperation with these integration associations will seamlessly complement relations between our countries.

At the request of our friends, we presented our assessment of the Ukraine-related situation. We thanked our colleagues for their balanced and measured stance on this issue and its surrounding context, and for refusing to support anti-Russian resolutions promoted at the UN by Kiev and the West. We reiterated President Putin’s approaches to the current situation and to the settlement of this crisis, which have been repeatedly set out, including in recent weeks at the Russia–ASEAN summit in Kazan on June 17-18 which are based, I would emphasise once again, on eliminating the underlying causes of the ongoing conflict, which is a war unleashed by the West against the Russian Federation through the hands of the illegitimate Kiev regime.

We share a common assessment of the situation in the Middle East and around the Islamic Republic of Iran. We hope that the memorandum signed between Washington and Tehran will prevent a renewed outbreak of violence.

Once again, I thank my colleague for the productive work and now give her the floor.

Question: The African continent is on its way to become a key centre of the multipolar world, yet Western countries continue to put pressure on African countries. What can Russia do to adjust its African strategy so that our political friendship is fully complemented by mutually beneficial and economically sustainable projects?

Sergey Lavrov: There’s no need for us to adjust our strategy. All we need to do is implement it. From day one of decolonisation, the Soviet Union was the main driving force behind this process and initiated the adoption of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. In the years that followed, the Soviet Union provided strategic assistance to African countries helping them strengthen their statehood by creating the foundations of national industry, agriculture, education, and healthcare systems. Hundreds of industrial enterprises were built to process raw materials that Africa is rich in into finished products and to create added value.

The West acted differently. After being forced to leave most of the African soil, some of them, France for example, continued to maintain illegal presence in some places, including the islands belonging to Madagascar. This fact has been repeatedly confirmed by UN General Assembly resolutions. However, the French are reluctant to leave these islands and remain illegally present in a number of other African countries as well.

The West has consistently extracted natural resources and derived enormous profit by processing African raw materials and capturing the added value and obtaining profits that were inordinately disproportionate to their contribution to the development of the African continent.

To reiterate, the Soviet Union pursued a strategy of supporting industrialisation. Now, as our relations with Africa have taken on a new dimension since the early 2000s and opportunities have emerged to fill them with specific projects, we are returning to the strategy aimed at ensuring self-sufficiency of our African friends. The third Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow in October will be devoted to specific steps to implement this strategy. On top of traditional areas such as energy, including nuclear energy, and food security, its agenda will include digital technologies, AI and, importantly, the development of reliable and independent payment systems.

I believe we are on the right track. Our African partners see significant benefits from holding such events, as each summit gives a boost to practical cooperation. Trade is growing at a fast pace and is expected to reach $30 billion soon compared to modest figures just 15 to 20 years ago. We are implementing a programme known as “debt-for-development swaps.” Back in the day, we wrote off the bulk of African countries’ debt to Russia in the amount of over $20 billion. The remaining small amounts have in most cases been converted into debt-for-development format, meaning that the funds they owe to us will be used for joint investment projects in the economies of the respective African countries.

So, I believe we are on the right path.

Question: President Trump said he would return to the Ukraine conflict settlement after the war with Iran ends. What are the Russian side’s expectations in this regard? Is there concern that Washington might once again be distracted from this issue?

Sergey Lavrov: We have no concerns. We do have a sense that there may again be a shift in approach, as it happened after the Anchorage summit where we reached certain understandings. Now everyone is saying that the “spirit has faded.” But the spirit has nothing to do with understandings. The understandings were clear and were reached on the basis of President Putin agreeing to the proposals presented by the American side.

However, changes can go both ways. Recently, speaking at congressional hearings, my counterpart, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said to our surprise that Washington was unable to act as a mediator on Ukraine matters, because the United States fully supported Ukraine. They do indeed support Ukraine not only by renewing the Biden-era sanctions, but also by imposing their own sanctions and implementing special Pentagon programmes to bolster the Kiev regime’s military-industrial sector.

Nevertheless, despite all this, and despite the fact that the United States seeks to fully oust Russian companies from the global energy market - which they have openly stated - we appreciate the fact that after returning to the White House the Trump administration has never questioned the importance of dialogue. The Presidents maintain contact. They met in Alaska and regularly speak by telephone. They got on the phone not long ago. The US President’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visit us occasionally. I maintain contact with Marco Rubio. We have had several in-person meetings and speak by phone from time to time.

We welcome the dialogue. By contrast, the Europeans are bragging about their “principles” (I’m not sure what they are talking about) and insist that one can speak to Russia only from a position of force. They said this again at the EU summit. They claim the role of a mediator, yet issue ultimatums, as was the case following British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French President Emmanuel Macron’s  meeting with Vladimir Zelensky in London. On June 7, they put out a five-point ultimatum, which the ambassadors of these three countries later delivered to the Russian Foreign Ministry. It’s unclear how they see themselves in the role of negotiators.

In addition to signals that Europe should “lead” these talks, yesterday the EU summit participants decided to renew sanctions on Russia not for six months, as they did before, but for one year. This appears to be another signal that Europe is now “serious about dealing with Russia” and that “Russia must surrender.” A very weird tactic, indeed. One can call it anything, but certainly not normal politics or diplomacy.

Back to the United States, we noted that despite Secretary Rubio’s remark that Washington is unable to act as a mediator because it plays on Ukraine’s side, President Trump said he was ready to return to efforts seeking to facilitate the settlement of the Ukraine crisis. We are ready for that. We maintain our commitment to the approaches to a settlement that the American side proposed to us at the Anchorage summit.

Question: Is there any understanding regarding possible dates of a visit by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Russia? Will the agenda of the meeting be affected by recent terrorist attacks carried out by Ukraine, including strikes on a bus in the Bryansk Region?

Sergey Lavrov: The agenda always follows the events on the ground. I think our American colleagues would benefit from familiarising themselves with the facts that reveal the Kiev regime’s true nature. These facts abound.

By the way, when on August 15, 2025 President Putin met with President Trump in Alaska, the latter was shocked to find out that Ukraine had passed laws that outlawed not only the Russian language but also the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He asked several times Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, who accompanied him, whether this was true, and they confirmed that it was.

I believe that these outrageous terrorist attacks must be taken into account by our US colleagues who seek to help achieve agreement on the Ukraine settlement. As I mentioned earlier, we are ready for this. We operated on the premise that an understanding to that effect had been reached in Alaska almost a year ago.

As for the timeframe, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov and Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov have commented on this earlier saying the dates were to be determined. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were engaged in Iranian matters. A memorandum has reportedly been signed, and the 60-day talks on other tracks of the US-Iran and broader Middle East agenda were to begin today. However, shortly before my departure, I was informed that the start of these talks had been postponed. Apparently, something has come up. Perhaps someone is not particularly interested in seeing these negotiations start.

We wish these talks success whenever they may start. Our US colleagues and the Iranians know that we remain at their disposal if our assistance is needed regarding arrangements on what to do with stocks of enriched uranium. Our proposals remain on the table. President Putin mentioned this quite recently in his contacts with the stakeholders.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs