Lavrov, who led Moscow’s delegation to the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh, said that the Asia-Pacific region is a space that Washington and its NATO allies are trying to dominate.

Not so long ago, the concept of the Indo-Pacific Strategy was put forward, which promotes formats that are not open to all participants, and which essentially compete with the inclusive structures created around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Russian FM pointed out.

This policy also involves the militarization of this region with the obvious goal of containing China and Russian interests in the Asia-Pacific region, he added.

NATO no longer claims to be a purely defensive alliance, something they used to trumpet when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact existed, although it was never clear who they were defending against, the Russian foreign minister said ironically.

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