MOSCOW, January 4. /TASS/. A summit by the five permanent member-states of the UN Security Council (Russia, Britain, the United States, China and France) will hardly take place in the near future even against the background of the just-adopted statement, the research director of the Valdai Discussion Club, Fyodor Lukyanov, told TASS on Monday.

As he dwelt on the prospects for a summit by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council following the joint statement, Lukyanov said that nobody had rejected the idea, but, on the other hand, there were no plans for a summit in the near future.

"Such a summit would be somewhat binding. Getting together just for meeting’s sake to repeat the ideas contained in the joint statement would make no sense," he said.

"A more or less tangible agenda encompassing world order issues requires at least a minimal level of understanding what such a world order might look like. In the meantime, no such understanding is anywhere in sight. The way I see it, such a meeting is unlikely in the near future," Lukyanov stressed.

Regarding the possibility the nuclear powers’ joint statement might ease world tensions, Lukyanov remarked that its ability to serve as a factor for the relaxation of tensions was too insignificant.

"Everything that was said there had been pretty clear all along. It is good that they have confirmed this. The very instance of such a statement being adopted by the five nuclear powers is positive, but overestimating it would be totally unnecessary," he believes.

"The statement contains nothing new. The very fact that it was adopted by the five nuclear powers indicates that at the very basic level there exists an understanding security must be maintained," Lukyanov said.

In his opinion, the statement has no direct bearing on the forthcoming security guarantee talks with the United States.

"In the broad sense, yes, it does, but in fact Russia and the United States will be discussing more applied issues concerning security in Europe, in particular, in Eastern Europe. It is good, of course, that at the highest state level it has been repeated once again that nuclear war must never happen. But the forthcoming talks will be about something different," he added.

Joint statement

The idea of convening a summit meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council for discussing global stability and security issues was put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2020. All of the Security Council’s permanent members supported the proposal.

A joint statement by the leaders of Russia, Britain, China, the United States and France - all of them nuclear powers - was uploaded to the Kremlin’s website on Monday. The signatories came out against nuclear war and arms races and opposed the further proliferation of nuclear weapons.