Russia backs India for UNSC permanent seat

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has endorsed India for a permanent seat on the Security Council calling it a key international actor.

“The Council and UN have to be aligned to contemporary realities,” he said on Saturday at the high-level meeting of the General Assembly.

“We see the prospect of making the Security Council more democratic exclusively, through broadening the representation of the countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America,” he said.

“We know to add India and Brazil, in particular, as key international actors and worthy candidates for permanent membership within the council,” he added.

While Russia has indicated willingness to back India’s candidacy, this is the first time that it has done so categorically in public.

India is the only country to have the endorsement of all three Western permanent members and Russia – which amounts to the backing of all the permanent members except China.

Brazil does not have the backing of the US, while Germany and Japan, the other front-runners for permanent seats, don’t have Russia’s.

Lavrov criticised the US Indo-Pacific strategy as an attempt to “subjugate” Asian countries and to undermine ASEAN.

India figures in the Indo-Pacific strategy as a member of the Quad, the four-nation group that also includes Japan and Australia.

“Under the slogan of Indo-Pacific strategies, closed formats are being created and they undermine what has been built on the ASEAN for decades,” he said.

NATO has now declared as “indivisible” the security of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific, he said (although the interpretation said India and Pacific).

The US was trying to make the whole world “its backyard”, he asserted, and the West “is introducing dividing lines everywhere along the lines of a confrontation between blocs: You’re either with us or against us,” he said.