MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/. The Asia Pacific region is living through a political and economic transition from the comfort zone to a zone of turbulence, Alexei Ovchinnikov, director of the Russian foreign ministry’s department for Asian and Pacific cooperation, said on Tuesday.

"The Asia Pacific region is leaving the comfort zone politically and economically, and we can even speak about a zone of turbulence," he said at the 12th Asian Conference of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

According to Ovchinnikov, there is a tendency toward "replacing region-wide processes by micro-lateral schemes," geared to form "a new geopolitical project." "The Indo-Pacific concept is a trigger for that," he noted.

In his words, the Indo-Pacific concept tends to be presented as "the only and key mainstream," whereas its meaning is still non-transparent. "No one seems to care about the geographical frames of the Indo-Pacific region," he said. "A kind of an Indo-Pacific Quad (four-sided security dialogue involving the United States, Japan, India, and Australia - TASS) has emerged and development around this mechanism began immediately <…>, with several countries of the region joining it. Later, we saw a much more serious process, with this Quad establishing regular contacts with Latin America, the Middle East, and the Euro-Atlantic region."

The wide interpretation of the Indo-Pacific concept, in his words, makes it possible to ensure a "swift transition of the NATO Euro-Atlantics and the G7 Euro-Atlantics into the Indo-Pacific paradigm" to give birth to "a great number of mini-lateral structures." "Alternative mechanisms to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been established. And they are being multiplied, triggering a very serious split in this region, and it is not in favor of cooperation," the Russian diplomat noted. "Notably, the projects initiated within different schemes, including economic ones, are beyond healthy competition."

He stressed that the Russian side is observing "a serious growth in military activities [in this region]. "And this military activity is supplemented with serious force components from outside," he added.