Russia-ASEAN summit starts in Sochi

A two-day summit of Russia and the member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) opens in Sochi today, marking 20 years of Russia-ASEAN dialog partnership. It will be held under the slogan 'Towards Strategic Partnership for the Sake of the Common Good'.

According to the Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, the summit’s program will start with an official reception for the heads of delegations. Direct work will start on May 20, when the leaders of ten ASEAN countries will meet with representatives of the Business Forum. It will be followed by a plenary session. Global and regional agenda, results of Russia-ASEAN cooperation in 20 years and guidelines of future cooperation are among the focal points.

The program will be continued by a working breakfast, where integration in Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region will be discussed, namely prospects to interlink integration processes in Eurasia and in South-East Asia. The summit will end with a news conference, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin will take part.

From the Russian side, the summit will be attended by the First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, the Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev, the Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinskiy, the Minister for Education and Science, Dmitry Livanov, the Minister for the Development of Russian Far East Alexander Galushka, the Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov and the Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

According to Yuri Ushakov, the Sochi summit will be the third one in 20 years of dialog partnership The first Russia-ASEAN summit was held in Kuala Lumpur in 2005 and the second one - in Hanoi in 2010. "We expect the summit to give an impetus to advance Russian-ASEAN cooperation in all the fields. A target will be outlined to bring partnership to a qualitatively new strategic level," TASS cited him as saying.

The leaders of Russia and the ASEAN member states will adopt a Sochi declaration at the summit to highlight their general approaches to basic international and regional problems and the partnership’s further tasks. "The text has already been agreed and is available in the Russian and English languages, i.e. the leaders should approve and adopt it at the plenary session," Ushakov added.

The Russia-ASEAN summit is also expected to approve a comprehensive plan of measures to develop further cooperation in 2016-2020. This document is actually an addendum to the Sochi declaration. Reputable representatives of the diplomatic service and economic circles have prepared a conceptual report on the strategic vision of future Russia-ASEAN relations, which will be presented to the leaders of the countries at the plenary session.

The Business Forum will be held ahead of the summit, focusing on growth drivers in cooperation between Russia and ASEAN and Russia’s exports potentials. It will be attended by the Russian Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukayev, the President of the Chamber of Commerce of the Russian Federation, Sergey Katyrin, ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh, the SCO Secretary-General Rashid Alimov, the President of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Jin Liqun, an adviser on strategic partnerships with multilateral organizations of the World Bank Group, Gilles Alfandari, as well as more than 500 entrepreneurs from Russia and the ASEAN countries, representatives of Russian regions.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, set up in 1967, brings together Brunei, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.

Senior Researcher at the Russian Center of Studies of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum at RANEPA, Gleb Ivashentsov, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that "Southeast Asia is very important for Russia, because ASEAN brings together 10 states, many of which play a growing role in the global economy and politics, for example Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. And these countries have a very good economic prospects," he said.

"But the fact is that ASEAN also plays an important political role in facilitating interaction between Asia-Pacific countries. And strengthening the political and economic relations is very important for us," the expert added.

"Unfortunately, our economic ties are not developed very well yet. This task is very serious for us too, and we must rely on the fact that this summit will give impetus to the rapprochement between Russia and the ASEAN countries. Especially, considering the fact that our positions on key international issues coincide. The ASEAN countries also oppose a unipolar world in favor of polycentric democratic world, where big and small countries may interact on equal terms," he pointed out.

According to the expert, currently Russia is cooperating with the ASEAN countries in politics, economy, military and technical spheres. "We are actively cooperating with  Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar in the military-technical sphere. In particular, cooperation in the oil and gas sphere is actively developing with Vietnam. This summit is of crucial importance, since a joint declaration outlining the main directions [of cooperation], will be adopted there," Gleb Ivashentsov concluded.

The former deputy head of the first Asian Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Valentin Moiseyev, in turn, said that "ASEAN is a huge association of countries, which include more than 600 million people in sum." Of course, we simply cannot refuse to cooperate with such countries. And it is beneficial to both us and those ASEAN countries," he said.

"First of all, we support the economic and political ties This is a very important direction of our foreign trade. It is also a tourism sphere, which is widely used by Russian citizens. As for policy, it is the maintenance of the balance of power that exists in the world today," the expert continued.

Speaking about further development of cooperation between Russia and the Southeast Asian nations, he recalled the words of Mao Zedong: "The road is tortuous but the prospects are bright". "It depends not only on our willingness or willingness of the ASEAN countries. We have it, and it serves as a guarantee that these relations will develop. But we cannot say that there is the increase in trade and the number of tourists visits is growing today, because it depends on many factors. So, I think we have unalloyed relations with these countries, and therefore there is no obstacle for their further development," Valentin Moiseev concluded.