Sergey Lavrov: “One could say that we are at the high point of the efforts to restructure the world order, which we hope will lead to a stable and just multipolar world. So far, however, the restructuring looks more like a breakdown in every sense of the word”

Photo: MFA

Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a general meeting of RIAC members
Moscow, March 31, 2026

Mr Ivanov,

Colleagues,

I am pleased to welcome the participants of the general meeting of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) members both those present here in person and our colleagues joining us via videoconference. As always, it is gratifying to see many familiar faces that are directly involved in RIAC’s work or otherwise closely cooperate with the Ministry as part of their professional activities.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Council, and this meeting marks another significant milestone in its history.

Even though not much time - by historical standards - has passed since the Council was created in 2011 (I have vivid memories of that period and the decision-making process of the time), it has established itself as one of Russia’s leading centres of foreign policy expertise, developed a recognisable identity, and even laid down certain traditions.

In our assessment, the Council consistently strives to maintain high standards of professionalism and to remain on the leading edge of analysing international processes. The Foreign Ministry and other state authorities (I know this well) invariably appreciate these efforts and use the results of the Council’s work in the practical activities of executive bodies, the Presidential Executive Office, and the Government apparatus.

Dramatic, to put it mildly, events are unfolding around the world. Without a doubt, they affect the Council’s operations. In this regard, I would like to note the steps taken by the Council’s senior officials in order to expand expert engagement with the World Majority countries, primarily China and India, as well as with states of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We also see and appreciate the efforts to analyse new developments in international life such as fragmentation of the global economic space, the crisis of institutions that were created to govern it, hybrid warfare, the implementation of the until-recently-unimaginable technologies into military affairs, and a direct challenge to diplomacy as a method of regulating international relations on the basis of international law and diplomatic norms. The analytical research by the Council’s staff and members not only shapes public discussion on these issues to a significant degree but is also sought after by the executive authorities.

This work is fully relevant amid the highly turbulent, contradictory, and conflict-ridden phase of global development that Russia and the rest of the international community have entered. One could say that we are at the high point of the efforts to restructure the world order, which we hope will lead to a stable and just multipolar world. So far, however, the restructuring looks more like a breakdown in every sense of the word. The fight for the leading positions in the new world is extremely intense, nothing less than a fight for survival. We witness this almost daily.

Today, international and domestic political analysts point to an entire set of developments illustrating the complex and multi-dimensional nature of the current period. They draw attention to the increasingly blatant undermining of the modern international law system. Fewer and fewer restraining factors remain. These factors have for decades ensured a degree of stability, albeit relative. Put simply, some countries have lost all sense of restraint as they openly claim their “rights” to various territories without bothering to offer any legal justification for their plans.

A most recent example is quite telling. Responding to a question about how to bring the war in the Persian Gulf to an end more quickly, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said everything depended on Iran suggesting that all it needed to do was open the Strait of Hormuz; otherwise it would continue grossly violating international law. The point was that Iran shouldn’t have shut down the Strait of Hormuz because it ran counter to international law. Two days earlier, President Donald Trump stated that he didn’t need international law and was guided by “his own morality and gut feeling.” A one-two strategy of sorts.

Certain elements of international life are taking us back to the distant past. Top military and political leaders of individual countries are abducted or killed with impunity and without any guardrails. You are well aware of this. Entire urban districts and their inhabitants are being annihilated with Old Testament ferocity; children’s outpatient clinics and schools are wiped out, and hundreds of schoolgirls die in an instant. Nuclear energy facilities under international safeguards, as well as other civilian life support infrastructure are subjected to bombardment. No one other than us and our like-minded partners is concerned about international law.

We are witnessing an abrupt increase in the role of military force in international affairs which is placing immense pressure on the constant values of international relations which get destabilized in the process. Many experts see the root of the problem in the mechanisms underlying the foreign policy of leading Western countries, whose financial and economic system runs effectively only during external expansion and exploitation of other countries’ resources.

Indeed, a situation is emerging where the West, with its insatiable hegemonic ambitions, has entered the clinch with the World Majority’s aspiration to overcome existing challenges on the basis of equality and justice, in other words, the principles of the UN Charter agreed upon in the wake of the Second World War, namely, the sovereign equality of states, non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, and the right of nations to self-determination, which must be recognised by all legitimate governments.

Clearly, these principles have not always, I would even say rarely been used in real politics, but they served as guiding posts that no one ever questioned. This has always backed our efforts, and those of other states, to draw attention in any given crisis to the fact that there was a consensus on how the world should live in peace after the Second World War. This was a natural basis for diplomatic dialogue.

Europeans, too, have become agitated and are calling on the United States and Israel to adhere to the principles of the UN Charter. However, they themselves have done much to ensure that these principles remained only on paper. It is necessary to return to them and restore at least their role as a form of moral persuasion, but this will not be easy to accomplish.

What we are witnessing now shows signs of potentially escalating into a wider conflict, which some scholars have already termed a new world war. Some of our colleagues have made similar assessments as well. In reality, not only Russia and China, and other BRICS countries, but also all other more or less independent centres of power and growth are becoming targets of aggressive counteraction on behalf of those who are accustomed to living off other nations’ backs and are thinking of themselves as hegemonic powers. Actions we are currently observing on the international stage which effectively amount to coups d’état under the banners of combatting drug trafficking or eliminating a “regime that for 47 years has done nothing but engage in global terrorism” are ultimately (and this is stated publicly) dictated by the need to control ever greater amounts of oil and gas resources. At the very least, this logic clearly underlies many of the unfolding initiatives.

All of that is, of course, fully evident in what is taking place in the Gulf region and, more broadly, in the Middle East. As you may be aware, Russia is advocating an immediate cessation of aggression by the United States and Israel against Iran. We consider the use of military force against civilians and civilian infrastructure unacceptable wherever it may occur: in Iran or in the GCC member states, which are also seriously affected by the ongoing developments. We stand ready to provide mediation or other assistance to the parties to the conflict in order to return the situation to a political and diplomatic track.

Yesterday, I held a meeting with foreign ministers of the GCC member states. The GCC Secretary General Jasem Al Budaiwi and Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Jordan Daifallah Al Fayez also took part in the meeting. We presented our assessments in detail. The meeting lasted more than two hours. We noted the ongoing relevance of the Concept of Collective Security in the Gulf Region advanced by Russia in the 2010s, which provides for fully normalised relations between Iran and its Arab neighbours. We can infer from the developments in the region that the United States and Israel are the ones that are attempting to prevent normalised relations between Iran and its neighbours, and even to sic GCC members on the Islamic Republic.

We maintain a constructive approach to resolving other conflicts around the world. However, it is troubling to see some of our partners misunderstand the point of diplomacy and the role of talks in international relations. Whenever diplomatic or negotiating contacts are used to cover up preparations for a military invasion - or even to create a pretext for one - this is wrong, unacceptable, and unfair.

We have observed backstabbing of that kind both with regard to Iran and in the context of the Minsk agreements. As you may recall, the signatories to these agreements, namely, then President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko, then Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, and then President of France François Hollande openly stated several years later (which, I must admit, surprised me) that they had never intended to implement them. In other words, despite the fact that the UN Security Council had endorsed them by consensus, they had no intention of acting on them. They claimed they merely needed to buy time to pump weapons into the Nazi Kiev regime and to better prepare it to serve as the spearhead in the war that the collective West was plotting and ultimately unleashed against the Russian Federation.

Of course, we cannot put up with this. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken about the lessons we have learned from engagement with the West over the past more than two decades. Undoubtedly, having learned from bitter experience, we will from now on insist more firmly on compliance by all participants in international relations with generally accepted standards of conduct.

It was an engaging discussion. Some of our friends from the Muslim and Arab world were asked whether they truly believed that Iran would have attacked facilities located within the borders of the GCC countries had it not been for the aggression perpetrated by the United States and Israel given that Iran has not historically initiated such wars, whereas wars have been launched against it, including at the beginning of this century and in the previous one.

Indeed, there is talk about “proxies.” However, if we look past this rather unfortunate term, all countries in the region seek to project their influence onto other countries, sometimes neighbouring, sometimes not. This comes naturally with statehood. The Arab Gulf countries are no exception, just as Iran is not.

The response was that Iran was allegedly plotting an attack on them regardless and was merely waiting for the right pretext to go ahead with it. What kind of pretext? The aggression of the United States and Israel - that is the pretext. In other words, Iran was supposedly waiting for this aggression to take place in order to grab the opportunity and to take pleasure in attacking its neighbours.

This is, of course, an extremely simplistic explanation. Iran never planned an attack; on the contrary, it was an energetic participant of discussions on establishing an Arab-Iranian security system. In addition to Russia, China also supported this approach, and Iran itself put forward initiatives to this end. There was every opportunity to go down this road.

A couple of years ago, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia normalised relations with Iran, and they exchanged diplomatic missions. In the autumn of 2004, in Doha, the capital of Qatar, the first in-person conference of the foreign ministers of the Arab monarchies and the Islamic Republic of Iran took place. Clearly, that did not sit well with those who seek to assume control over the vast resources possessed by the countries of the region.

In our work, we are guided by the objective of creating secure and favourable external conditions for our country’s development and for improving the quality of life in our country. This is a key provision and requirement that runs consistently through all versions of Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept, which has guided our diplomatic work since 2000.

Clearly, our relations with the West - President Putin mentioned this - are going through a severe crisis. Most importantly, we must firmly defend our national interests while keeping the door open to dialogue and potential agreements. However, first, this must be done on a strictly equitable and mutually advantageous basis. Second, the door is open to those willing to leave their whims at the door and present their proposals in specific terms. We will then decide how to respond to ideas that may still come from Western elites. However, we will not be chasing after anyone. That much is certain.

We have many partners among the World Majority countries with whom we continue to strengthen ties comprehensively, both bilaterally and within frameworks such as the Union State, the EAEU, the CIS, the CSTO, the SCO, and BRICS. I would also note the importance of our allied relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The initiatives put forward by the Russian leadership on the international stage, be it the earlier mentioned Concept of Collective Security in the Persian Gulf, the Greater Eurasian Partnership, or the creation of a collective security architecture in Eurasia, are constructive in nature. They impose nothing on anyone and, in all cases, encourage equal dialogue aimed at finding a balance of interests among those willing to participate in this work.

Colleagues,

RIAC’s work plans for this year largely reflect the areas of activity I have outlined, align with our foreign policy priorities, and are aimed at supporting the objectives set out in Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept. I have no doubt that the Council will continue, at a high professional level, to provide analytical and informational support for the activities of our Ministry and other state bodies.

I would like to close by underscoring our commitment to continuing cooperation and interaction with the Council. And, in my capacity as Chair of the Board of Trustees, I wish all members of the Council every success and all the best.

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