JAKARTA, September 7. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take part in the 18th East Asia Summit, which will be held in the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta on Thursday.

The Russian minister arrived in Jakarta on Wednesday and has already held several bilateral meetings.

Set up in 2005, the East Asia Summit (EAS) is a platform for dialogue between leaders of the Asia-Pacific region on a wide range of issues. The forum comprises ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, as well as their dialogue partners - Russia, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, and the United States. This year, East Timor was invited as a candidate for ASEAN membership.

East Asia Summits are held annually within framework of ASEAN meetings. As a rule, Russia is represented by the foreign minister.

Last year, the summit did not yield a joint statement due to the United States’ demands concerning Ukraine. According to Lavrov, the US side and its partners insisted on an unacceptable assessment on the situation in and around Ukraine.

Dangerous tendencies

According to the Russian foreign ministry, Russia thinks it important to discuss the present-day challenges facing the Asia Pacific region.

"During the event, we believe it is important to discuss the challenges the Asia-Pacific region is facing, in particular, we intend to draw attention to the risk of the military and political situation in the Asia-Pacific region being aggravated against the background of the West's realization of its plan to expand the geographical area of so-called NATO responsibility," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. "There is also a need for a substantive conversation about preserving the stability of the ASEAN-centric architecture, which is facing serious pressure from alternative bloc platforms."

In July, the top Russian diplomat noted that the ASEAN methods were subject to testing. He stressed that the United States and its allies were seeking to replace the ASEAN-centric security architecture in the Asia Pacific, which had been formed for decades and has been acceptable for all until now, with "their so-called Indo-Pacific strategies and NATO’s expansion into this region."

Apart from that, according to Lavrov, Tokyo and Seoul are signaling that they want to have their own nuclear weapons of deploy American. This is "a very serious and very dangerous trend," he stressed.

North Korea’s countermeasures

A difficult situation is developing around the Korean Peninsula. It was reported on September 4 that North Korea conducted drills simulating tactical nuclear strikes on military targets in South Korea. The drills were organized as a response to the United States and South Korea’s Ulchi Freedom Shield maneuvers geared, according to the North Korean side, to drill a scenario of a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea. According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s nuclear forces will continue strengthening "combat readiness for countermeasures called to deter a war" and protect peace and stability in the region.

Apart from that, North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun-nam said that the United States is using the situation in Ukraine as a pretext to expand its influence onto the Asia Pacific region and is seriously threatening the security of not only North Korea but also of other independent states of the region.

Multi-vector cooperation

The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman stressed that the Russian side considers the summit platform "an important element of the regional security architecture with the potential to develop practical cooperation in many directions.

According to the Russian defense ministry, the summit’s agenda will focus on the pressing regional topics, as well as on issues of the development of practical cooperation. "Priority areas of sectoral cooperation are the economy, energy, environment, healthcare, cooperation at sea, emergency response, food security, education, regional interdependence," it said.

Apart from that, the ministry stressed that Russia stands for expanding multi-vector applied cooperation within the East Asia Summit. "Our initiatives within this platform include establishing regional work on fighting pandemics and the launch of a mechanism of collective response to epidemic threats, the development of practical cooperation in the area of tourism," it said.

Apart from that, Russia has proposed to include the issues of the development of volunteer movement on the summit’s agenda. "We see prospects for strengthening social and humanitarian relations in the region, as well as expanding contacts between people in this dynamically developing phenomenon of civic responsibility," the ministry said. "The Western wing of the East Asia summit, despite ASEAN’s support for the Russian initiative, is still seeking to block it."

The latest report of the Valdai International Discussion Club noted that most of Asian countries plan to develop relations with Moscow, despite the West’s pressure and the turbulent situation in the world. Even the United States’ traditional allies in the region - Japan and South Korea - are unlikely to sever ties with Russia completely, expert believe.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko noted that Japan and South Korea are trying to discriminate between business and politics, and preserve business ties with Russia as far as they can.

Consolidation of efforts

Russia stands for strengthening the system of interstate ties in the region, including by means of consolidating efforts of ASEAN and regional Eurasian formats, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the Russian foreign ministry stressed.

Thus, since 2017, the chiefs of the SCO and EAEU executive bodies have been regularly invite to top-level ASEAN events. "The secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization took part in the East Asia Summit in 2017 and 2022," the ministry recalled. "This year, the Indian Ocean Rim Association and the Pacific Islands Forum will be the guests of the East Asia summit.".