Russia and China discuss NATO's policy of shifting to the Asia-Pacific region

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Jakarta, Lavrov noted that at the NATO Summit in Madrid last year and at the recently concluded summit in Vilnius, the alliance declared its global role and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg affirmed that security is not a regional but a global task.

"The thesis that is being used is that security in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions is indivisible. There are plans to move part of NATO's military infrastructure to this region, including those countries that were invited to the Vilnius Summit, I mean Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, South Korea. By the way, Japan and South Korea have sent signals that they are not against storing US nuclear weapons or having their own nuclear weapons. This is a very serious and dangerous trend. We have been talking about this with our ASEAN colleagues, we also talked with our Chinese representative, Mr. Wang Yi, today we had a long meeting with him," Lavrov said.

The Russian Foreign Minister affirmed: "It is clear that the focus of these strategies is to oppose China, to oppose the Russian Federation openly and without disguise, so naturally, today we talked in full detail with Mr. Wang Yi about the ways and the direction that the parties need to implement in this region, and as both sides agreed, this direction is based on the need to strengthen, not reduce, the central role of ASEAN."