MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/. Russia conducts an independent foreign policy and it is open to equitable cooperation in both bilateral and multilateral formats, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with participants in the program Dialogue for the Sake of the Future, run by the A.M. Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Support Fund.
"We conduct an active foreign policy," he said. "An independent foreign policy is one of our major political gains."
"Independence is not tantamount to isolation," Lavrov said. "By no means. We are open to diversified bilateral contacts with all countries that are prepared to do business with us on the basis of equality and mutual benefit and to contacts within the framework of numerous multilateral formats."
In particular he mentioned the United Nations and the UN Security Council, the Eurasian Economic Union, the CSTO, the CIS, BRICS, the SCO, the Group of 20 and other dialogue formats that Russia has established with many regional organizations, including the African Union, sub-regional associations of the African continent, the Community of the Latin American and Caribbean States, the sub-regional associations of the Latin American continent, ASEAN and the associations in Asia and the Pacific.