RIO DE JANEIRO, February 22. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described his meetings with his Latin American counterparts on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty ministerial meeting as useful.

"Our regular ministerial meetings between Russia and CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) were suspended during the Covid pandemic," he said after the G20 ministerial meeting. "Now we see readiness on the part of Brazil and our colleagues from Paraguay. I met with him yesterday, he is my dear old friend. We also heard active support for such meetings in Venezuela and Cuba. Typically, these meetings are dedicated to general issues, but they were very useful."

He noted that meetings on the margins of big international forums are usually "brief and there is not enough time to touch upon the entire spectrum of issues, but each country has certain priorities that can be addressed briefly."

"That is why we discussed with Latin American countries their further participation in the work of the Group of Twenty and BRICS. In particular, we discussed this in detail with my Brazilian counterpart in UN multilateral formats. In what concerns Latin America, we have relations with CELAC, with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, an integration association of Latin American and Caribbean countries - TASS), with the Central American Integration System and a range of other structures," he said.