Completing his mission in Jakarta Russian 🇷🇺 Ambassador to #ASEAN H.E. Mr. Alexander Ivanov sums up the work being done during his tenure in the article "ASEAN does matter to Russia. A lot".

💬Indeed, for the last several years Russia became an indispensable actor in the Asia Pacific. Our #ASEAN friends understand and appreciate a constructive stabilizing role of Russia 🇷🇺 with no hidden agenda in the region. Our philosophies of international relations, based on the principle of sovereign equality of nations, are similar.

❗️Our practical cooperation reached a status of strategic partnership in 2018, fixed during the Summit of our leaders in Singapore. During these years in addition to existing areas of cooperation, we have managed to launch and actively promote new ones, including Consultations of the High Representatives for Security Issues, Dialogue on ICT Security-related issues, meetings of Tourism ministers and others. In the end of 2021 we successfully held the first ASEAN-Russia Naval Exercises (#ARNEX) in the Indonesian territorial waters. In 2022 we organized a number of events within the framework of ASEAN-Russia Year of Scientific and Technical Cooperation. Dozens of joint projects were implemented and financed by Russia 🇷🇺 in various spheres ranging from agriculture to training of ASEAN health experts and specialists of law-enforcement agencies. We continued to develop practical cooperation between ASEAN and Eurasian Economic Union as well as with Shanghai Cooperation Organization, thus moving the processes of integration of integrations across the huge Eurasian continent.

🔻We firmly believe that #ASEAN-centered mechanisms of cooperation, created in the last 55 years and based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and constructive engagement, including the #EAS, #ARF and #ADMM-Plus, played the pivotal role in stabilizing the region, balancing the interests of all big players and promoting mutual trust, which are prerequisites of the Asia Pacific phenomenon of becoming the main engine of the global economic growth. For many decades there were no hot military conflicts in the region. Largely it is the merit of #ASEAN wisdom and its leading role in shaping multilateral cooperation here. That is why Russia strongly supports #ASEAN centrality in the region not only in words but in deeds. 🤝

🔻There are many internal and external challenges for #ASEAN in the turbulent situation of strategic ambiguity. I am sure that the current Indonesian 🇮🇩 Chair will be able to navigate the “ASEAN ship” through the troubled waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans.

🔗https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2023/02/06/asean-does-matter-to-russia-a-lot.html