РУССКИЙ
18:51 25.04.2026 •
Photo: MFA
Opening remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a meeting with leaders of non-profit organizations.
Moscow, April 24, 2026
Good afternoon,
It’s good to see you again.
We meet in this format every year. I am aware that the organisations you represent and the divisions of our Ministry, the department directors and their staff, as well as deputy ministers overseeing specific areas maintain contacts and exchange information.
As is customary during annual events, we will focus on a candid and interactive discussion of international issues that everyone is aware of and that affect your important and highly valuable activities.
If you do not object, I will say a few words about our assessment of the most recent international developments, and we will then begin the interactive discussion.
President Putin repeatedly underscored that the world had entered an era of unprecedented change. Similar assessments have been made publicly by President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping. As President Putin has noted, in these turbulent circumstances, Russia, due to its history, geography, and civilisational identity, is playing a central role in these processes.
As our Chinese friends say, a crisis is interplay of danger and major opportunities. That’s the way of the world. Such periods have occurred many times in history.
The collective West policy is posing the main threat to international peace and security. We continue to call it “collective,” although the collective part is now being torn by disagreements. However, their strategic goal, we have no doubt about it, remains the same and is to dominate by any means, to dominate and continue dominating, and to preserve their hegemony for as long as possible, while containing the growth of new global centres and competitors in the World Majority countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Every day we observe, we are, in fact, shown in real time that in order to preserve their hegemony and to achieve these unseemly goals, illegal sanctions, plunder, the theft of other countries’ sovereign assets, blackmail, threats and, of course, the use of military force are employed, as we saw in Venezuela and now in Iran – all of that in blatant violation of international law.
The assessment that the unprovoked aggression by the Americans and Israelis against Iran has seriously destabilised the situation in the Middle East doesn’t even begin to cover it, because the situation is now becoming destabilised globally and all countries are assessing their prospects for economic development, energy supply sources, and so on. The continuation of the conflict (which, it appears, is far from over) will have the most negative repercussions for the entire international community, for the economic situation of most of humanity, and for global security.
All of that is not unfolding in a vacuum. The West’s decades-long expansion into the Eurasian continent, primarily the regions where Russia has historically had strong influence and legitimate traditional interests is another major factor of global destabilisation.
This persistent push, which in recent years has openly manifested itself in the slogan of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, reflects a long-standing, indeed, as it now turns out, centuries-long strategy. At one point in our history, after the creation of the UN, the OSCE, and following the breakup of the Soviet Union, prospects for coexistence and even cooperation with the West seemed quite realistic. All of that has now become a thing of the past.
A war against us has been openly declared. The Kiev regime is being used as the tip of the spear. However, everyone is aware that this tip is unusable without Western supplies of weapons, intelligence data, satellite systems, training of military personnel, and much more. The Kiev regime and the Ukrainian state are being openly taken advantage of as a geopolitical battering ram. Some rather outspoken individuals, I believe in the Belgian General Staff, publicly stated that they were getting ready for war with Russia and that Ukraine was helping them buy time. As they say, they couldn’t be clearer.
In order to justify their policy, the West - above all the international bureaucracy in Brussels (both EU and NATO, which are increasingly becoming one), as well as Berlin, Paris, and, of course, London - are attempting to demonise everything Russian and openly speak about gearing up for war with us in the foreseeable future. Chief of Defence of the Belgian Armed Forces FrederikVansina stated that they still have several years to go, and Ukraine is buying time for them. The same line of thinking transpired in a statement by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz when he described Israel’s attack on Iran and generally everything Israel is doing as the Israelis doing the dirty work for them by fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, and other “terrorist” organisations disregarding the history of their emergence. That history is directly linked to the outright refusal to implement the UN decision on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Despite the difficult circumstances, we will continue to pursue our foreign policy and to defend our vital national interests, creating the most favourable external environment for our country’s sustainable development as a multi-ethnic sovereign state strengthening our sovereignty in all areas. This is almost a verbatim quotation from the Foreign Policy Concept, which was updated and approved by the President of Russia in 2023. It remains in force and continues to stand today.
Our priorities include promoting equal and mutually beneficial partnerships with all those willing to cooperate on an equal footing, based on the universally recognised principles of the UN Charter and international law in general, and on the search for a fair balance of interests in order to achieve the goals of domestic development and to strengthen our sovereignty. A contrasting example is provided by our US colleagues, who are promoting their national interests as they understand them, and they understand them as their dominance which is currently reflected in their policy of gaining control over almost the entire global energy sector. We observe this every day.
The logic of the Americans in relations with most countries (I have not heard anyone say this in dialogue with us, and I hope I never will) is that if you do not do as I say, I will punish you. In other words, I do not promise anything, but you must give me what I want; and if you don’t, I will punish you. This is not a balance of interests, and certainly not an honest conversation.
Our policy of defending justice and our flat-out rejection of replacing international law with such arbitrariness is understood well by the majority of our partners in the Global South, who are also interested in strengthening their sovereignty and in achieving more equitable international relations, but who are not always able to say so openly due to the fact that they have been threatened with “punishment” if they contradict their senior partners.
On the one hand, this simplifies the situation. It becomes clear who is who. Many of our political analysts note that President Trump is open about his plans; he never misleads anyone. He may change his views frequently and quickly depending on the situation, but he does not disguise his rather tough plans with rhetorical embellishments that lead the discussion astray.
In this struggle (international relations are always a struggle) for justice, for the status and reputation of a country that conducts its affairs honestly, we intend to continue relying on our public institutions and non-profit organisations. In fact, you are making a sizable and useful contribution to the implementation of the foreign policy outlined by President Putin.
I would like to note in particular that you represent the minority in terms of numbers, in terms of representation in the international arena at various UN, OSCE and other entities even if we consider only the West and exclude public movements in the Global South. We can discuss this later today. Of course, Western and pro-Western organisations significantly outnumber those represented here and your colleagues from other countries who share similar approaches.
But we continue to believe that strength lies in truth. That has been uttered, and those words will never be changed. And those who impose their “truth” by force are historically destined for oblivion. We also appreciate the fact that in your international contacts abroad, and when you host your colleagues here, you often have trust-based discussions with your international partners. This also helps, including the countries (we would like to move away from the term “unfriendly countries”) whose governments currently pursue unfriendly policies towards Russia.
Such trust-based dialogue and maintaining a confidential atmosphere aimed at strengthening mutual understanding and developing intercivilisational and intercultural dialogue at the level of civil societies is highly useful. Its importance is growing given the circumstances.
Today’s geopolitical realities are such that public diplomacy is increasingly developing both in those countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America where it already existed, and in those countries where it has not traditionally played a role in foreign policy.
Conditions that allow for the expansion of contacts between civil society and non-profit organisations are also being created through our interstate work. I am referring to BRICS, the regular Russia-Africa Forum, the SCO, and the CIS. In all these entities, parallel track-two dialogue between representatives of civil society is encouraged. We will do everything possible to strengthen dialogue with your participation both on these multilateral platforms and at other forums. The dedicated departments of the Foreign Ministry, which oversee the SCO, BRICS, and the post-Soviet space, are always there for you.
I would particularly like to highlight the African dimension. In recent years, relations with our African partners have been making great strides across all areas.
I have mentioned your colleagues from Western countries earlier. Many of them do not accept Russophobia, are sympathetic to Russia, love the Russian language, culture, and literature, and share the spiritual and moral values that are typical of our multinational society. I have also mentioned organisations such as the UN and the OSCE which operate through dedicated committees and groups to promote cooperation with civil society. We would be glad to see more participants join the organisations represented here that already have such experience.
The civil society dimension of the agenda within the G20 is of note as well. It represents the most concentrated cross-section of the modern-day world, where the Western G7 countries and their allies - Japan and South Korea (ten countries in all) - are equally represented alongside the second Group of Ten consisting of BRICS countries and our dialogue partners within this format. This opens promising prospects for starting direct dialogue between representatives of the world majority and the Western minority.
Ukraine is the topic of interest to everyone and is currently the subject of a head-on confrontation between us and Europe. The Americans, of course, are primarily interested in advancing their own interests, but they are the only ones - I indicated this before - who have publicly acknowledged the existence of the underlying causes of this conflict. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly argued that Ukraine should forget about NATO which was one of the main underlying causes of the conflict, when Ukraine was primed through a series of Maidan events, coups, and cancelled elections (in 2004) to have its territory used for the deployment of modern high-tech military threats to the security of our country directly on our borders.
At the same time, the Americans are saying they are ready to factor in the realities on the ground the way they are now following the referendums. I can’t think of anyone else saying they were willing to recognise the outcomes of referendums and the ensuing territorial outcomes. They even support the idea that the entire Donbass - Donetsk and Lugansk regions (no one is even thinking about disputing the status of Crimea anymore) - should be recognised as part of the Russian Federation, as stipulated by our Constitution.
The West is in the grips of hysteria. Zelensky claims he will not leave the Donetsk region which is part of his security guarantees. In other words, he sees the war as part of the security guarantees. The West is telling him that the priority now is to stop hostilities - just freeze the situation as it is and provide Ukraine with security guarantees, including, as the French and British dream of, the deployment of some multinational stabilisation forces. This means one thing: they want to provide the Nazi regime with security guarantees.
Zelensky recently travelled to Cyprus and met with EU representatives to discuss guarantees for his continued hold on power and that of his clique, while keeping in place everything that has become another key underlying cause of the current situation, namely, the unleashed war and the legislative eradication of everything associated with Russia: the Russian language in education, the media and culture, and the destruction of canonical Orthodoxy. This is also part of the West’s civilisational aggression against the Russian Federation, because they planned and began to create civilisational threats on our state borders of that time in the very centre of the Russian world.
The same kind of civilisational aggression showed itself in encouraging Zelensky’s regime to eliminate everything Russian and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This is also part of the aggression against us, against Russia as a civilisation. This is how the West is leveraging the Nazi regime in Ukraine. When we are told that we should somehow resolve the Donbass issue, and that perhaps they will talk Zelensky into making concessions or, perhaps, Russia will make concessions and everything will be fine. Nothing will be fine. The West has openly stated that it was developing security guarantees for a regime that is viewed as a long-term threat to our country and will be used, among other things, for more military adventures. They have declared that all of this will begin in the 2029-2030 timeframe.
That is why we value the fact that the United States, despite the specifics of its actions, is taking a position of publicly outlining the underlying causes (in an approximation of their real understanding) and - most importantly - taking concrete steps: no NATO expansion and sticking to the understandings reached during the Alaska summit. Soon, we will mark the first anniversary of the Anchorage meeting. Over this period, the Europeans - credit must be given to their audacity - and Zelensky have done a great deal to push the Americans off the course that we had adopted and to continue their games aimed at destroying a geopolitical competitor.
The Russian language cannot be destroyed. We observe this in Ukraine as well. The more it gets banned, the more it is spoken even among representatives of Zelensky’s regime during meetings. They are more comfortable speaking Russian than Ukrainian, which many of them began to study upon entering politics.
In this context, I would like to note the creation of an International Organisation for the Russian Language at the initiative of President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Last month we held the first IORL ministerial conference and outlined plans for the initial stage of this new and promising organisation. We count on your contribution to setting up joint events and developing joint projects.
Concurrently, just like we did in previous years, we will team up with our non-profit organisations in order to ramp up the efforts to counter the historical aggression (part of the broader civilisational aggression against Russia), to thwart attempts to rewrite the history of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, and to revise the internationally recognised outcomes of our Great Victory.
This year, on April19, by an Executive Order of the President of Russia, the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People was observed for the first time - the genocide of all the peoples of the USSR committed by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. We believe his date provides us and our friends from non-profit society organisations with additional momentum to consistently pursue justice. We will also seek, including on international platforms, recognition of the crimes against the Soviet people of all ethnic backgrounds as genocide. In this regard, it is difficult to overestimate the role of patriotic non-profit organisations, which promote objective information and implement projects aimed at preserving and perpetuating the memory both in our own nation and in the nations of Europe that we liberated.
I would like to close by reiterating our commitment to continued cooperation with non-profit organisations across all areas. We supported the initiative of Rossotrudnichestvo and the Russian Association for International Cooperation to establish Day of People’s Diplomacy in Russia on April 5. This is a seminal event which will undoubtedly become a new focal point for consolidating our efforts and strengthening public diplomacy. We see the important role you are playing in advancing the historical and legitimate interests of our state and in implementing the foreign policy outlined by the President of Russia.
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