VIENTIANE, July 25 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has arrived in the capital of Laos, where he will take part in a series of ministerial and post-ministerial meetings within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Lavrov is expected to hold a number of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the ASEAN events. At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to the Asia-Pacific region with the Russian minister. He is visiting Vietnam, Laos, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Mongolia from July 24 to August 3.
At the same time, the US State Department previously stated that it does not expect any contacts between Blinken and Lavrov in Laos.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said earlier that Moscow currently considers contacts between heads of foreign affairs agencies to be irrelevant. According to him, Russia «has no questions that we could raise with them.» He said that all signals necessary in a given situation are communicated through existing channels, and as for the US approach, «we also understand it.»
ASEAN includes ten Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. East Timor is preparing to become the eleventh ASEAN country in the near future.
The East Asia Summit is a forum for dialogue between leaders of Asia-Pacific countries on a wide range of strategic political and economic issues, including the task of strengthening the regional security architecture. The next EAS summit will be held in October in Vientiane. Meetings in this format are held annually in conjunction with high-level ASEAN events. Since 2011, the leaders of the Russian Federation and the United States have also been invited to the forum of heads of state of East and Southeast Asia.