Russia prioritizes the development of mutually beneficial cooperation with China in all areas, providing mutual assistance and strengthening coordination in the international arena to ensure security, stability, and sustainable development at the global and regional levels, the document said.

In addition, Russia strives to improve the infrastructure of an international transport corridor connecting Europe with western China and develop the Russia-Mongolia-China economic corridor, it said.

The Foreign Policy Concept was approved by President Vladimir Putin in a decree signed on Friday to replace the 2016 version. The document came into force immediately.

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To build a multipolar world, Russia will focus on eliminating the U.S. dominance in world affairs and create conditions to counter any “neo-colonial and hegemonic ambitions,” the document said.

Russia called the United States “the main inspirer, organizer and executor of the aggressive anti-Russian policy of the collective West, the source of the major risks to the security of Russia, international peace and balanced, equitable and progressive development of mankind.”

Russia voiced its readiness to maintain strategic parity and peaceful coexistence with the United States and to establish a balance of interests between the two countries.

But the prospects for such relations depend on the U.S. readiness to abandon its policy of forceful domination and revise its anti-Russian course in favor of interactions with Russia, the document said.

As for the normalization of Russia-Europe ties, the concept criticized the strategic policy of the United States to “draw and deepen dividing lines in Europe to undermine the competitiveness of the economies of Russia and European states, limit the sovereignty of European states, and ensure the U.S. global dominance.”

The Foreign Policy Concept was approved by Putin in a decree signed on Friday to replace the 2016 version. The document came into force immediately.

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The assessment published by Finland’s Ministry of the Interior covers 21 nationally significant threat scenarios and disruptions, ranging from hybrid influence activities and armed conflicts to natural disasters, industrial accidents and climate phenomena.

The previous risk assessment was published in 2018.

The assessment anticipates sudden incidents targeted at Finland that have an impact on the vital functions of society and require the authorities to adopt exceptional measures or even request help from other countries.

According to the report, climate change, the digitalization of societies, hybrid influence activities and networked value and production chains are further examples of development trends and phenomena in the operating environment of threats and disruptions.

There are two new threats compared with the previous report: multiple simultaneous large wildfires and an extremely powerful space storm, national broadcaster Yle said.

There is also a high probability of a new pandemic, the report noted. However, it is impossible to estimate the magnitude of the risk and the severity of the pandemic in advance, it said.

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“Through joint efforts in the coming year, Russia and China will be able to strengthen and advance bilateral interstate ties,” the ministry said in a statement. “As it is known, Russian President V.V. Putin invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping to a government visit in the spring. We are proceeding with the understanding that this will be the central event for the bilateral relationship in 2023.”

The meeting, which would be the second in-person meeting between Xi and Putin since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine last February, could signal a deepening of ties between the two states. As many countries have sanctioned Russia in response to the invasion, China is one of the countries credited with keeping the Russian economy afloat by continuing to maintain trade with Russia.

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“The West disrespects the neutrality of developing countries and almost daily pressures those who do not join the sanctions against Russia,” Lavrov said.

The minister stressed that the thesis about Russia’s refusal to negotiate on Ukraine is false, and Russia will continue to deny it.

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“This is part of Russia’s strategy to destabilize societies that follow the European path,” Baerbock said, when asked if she shared fears that Georgia and Moldova might go over to Moscow’s side.

She noted that due to the situation in Ukraine, “Russia’s attempts to influence Moldova and Georgia are intensifying.”

“We share European values with them and support their desire to decide for themselves to live in peace and freedom through the prospect of membership in Europe,” she added.

In early March, protests were held in Georgia against the draft law “On Foreign Agents,” which involves the creation of a register of non-governmental organizations and media receiving foreign funding. The Georgian authorities later withdrew this bill.

On March 12, clashes between the opposition and the police took place in Moldova. The head of the General Commissariat of Police of the country, Viorel Cernauteanu, claimed that Russian special services were involved in these events in the country.

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“The total inadequacy of decisions and actions of the current Kyiv regime, whose politicians are notorious for their carelessness, inability to negotiate, and blatant Russophobia, is obvious. And, although Russia does not reject the option for negotiations and a political resolution of the conflict, we are not going to talk under the preconditions put forth by the Kyiv authorities. Everything now depends exclusively on the readiness of Kyiv and its Western puppeteers for a true political and diplomatic resolution of the crisis,” the senior diplomat told TASS.

Galuzin also called the “so-called peace initiatives” of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “that, if implemented, he allegedly is ready for a truce with Russia under” totally unacceptable.

“The Ukrainian leader’s proposal to make a ‘gesture of goodwill’ and withdraw Russian forces from Ukrainian territory for Christmas is also absurd. It is also unclear how all these slogans and calls correspond with Zelensky’s decree, signed on September 30, about the ‘impossibility’ of negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the Deputy Foreign Minister added.

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“The parties are ready to strengthen mutual coordination to support the countries of Central Asia in ensuring their sovereignty and national development, do not accept attempts to import “color revolutions” and external interference in the affairs of the region,” the statement says.

Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Russia upon invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia became the first country visited by Xi Jinping after his re-election. His visit lasted two days, from 20 to 22 March. On the first day, Chinese President and Russian President Vladimir Putin held an informal meeting. Negotiations were held between the heads of the two countries in an expanded format on March 21. Following the meeting, Xi and Putin signed a statement on plans for economic cooperation and a statement on plans to deepen partnership.

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“Next week, high-level talks will be held with the Russian delegation in Geneva,” he said.

At the same time, Haq denied the suggestion that Russia had refused Guterres’ trip to Moscow to negotiate a grain deal.

“This is not so,” he stressed, adding that Guterres “wants and is open to meeting with representatives of the Russian authorities as opportunities arise.”

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On Thursday, a drone attack on a U.S. base in northeastern Syria served as the latest reminder that the United States remains at war in Syria and U.S. personnel are at risk. The drone attack, which U.S. intelligence swiftly concluded was of “Iranian origin,” killed one U.S. contractor and wounded six others, including five U.S. service members. In response, President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. military to carry out precision airstrikes against facilities belonging to groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing eight fighters. The tit-for-tat escalation continued into Friday morning, when “lots of rockets” were fired at a different U.S. base in Syria, this time in the southeast of the country, though no casualties were reported.

This is not the first time that U.S. personnel have been targeted in Syria—and it is unlikely to be the last. American soldiers have no shortage of enemies in the country and have faced regular attacks since they arrived more than seven years ago. What began as a U.S. regime change effort against the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has since morphed into an open-ended confrontation—where the official mission of suppressing the Islamic State has obscured U.S. efforts to counter Russia and Iran. These ambiguous objectives have ensured that the United States is no closer to leaving Syria than it was when it first put boots on the ground.

Americans in Syria are confronting real dangers. According to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Iran Projectile Tracker, Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. service members with at least seventy-two munitions since 2017 (not including this week’s attacks), with more than 90 percent of those occurring in the last two years. Notably, this data does not include attacks by the Syrian government or Russia-backed forces, including the infamous Wagner Group, which launched a daring, massive assault on about forty American commandos in 2018 that left 200 to 300 of the attackers dead. Nor does it account for the Russian military’s harassment of Americans in Syria. Just last week, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Russian Air Force has increasingly been flying over the positions of U.S. troops in a “provocative” manner. This behavior has also occurred on the ground: Russian troops have rammed U.S. convoys and, as an inspector general report to Congress recently found, “increased their violations” of agreed-upon deconfliction arrangements.

The Biden administration has vowed to continue defending the 900 U.S. service members in Syria for as long as they remain in the country—an apparently indefinite timeframe. Despite Biden moving to end or drawdown the United States’ other “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, this policy has not been extended to Syria. Rather, Washington is ostensibly committed to fighting ISIS and pressuring the Assad regime, which continues to be squeezed by a robust, U.S.-directed sanctions regime.

Yet Washington is certainly aware that Damascus is not as isolated as it once was. Regional rapprochement with Syria is already in full swing; not only have the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman opened their doors to the Syrian government, but even Turkey and Saudi Arabia, once Assad’s fiercest enemies, are looking to reconcile.

Coming on the heels of a Chinese-brokered agreement that codified Saudi Arabia’s détente with Iran, the emerging Saudi-Syrian peace deal stands to further shift Middle Eastern geopolitics. If successful, Moscow’s assistance in restoring Riyadh and Damascus’ diplomatic ties after a decade of war will be a remarkable victory for another U.S. adversary—as well as for the entire region. In this regard, it will further impress upon regional elites that they have options beyond America to advance their political and security objectives.

Indeed, it is China and Russia—America’s so-called “great power competitors”—whose regional policies are now helping to stabilize the Middle East and support U.S. interests. China portrays itself as a friend to all and an enemy to none, allowing Beijing to position itself as an honest intermediary that can address the region’s problems in ways Washington cannot. Russia, too, is seen as a dependable partner—one that has stood by its Syrian ally through thick and thin—and an interlocutor that has proven its sensitivity to the needs of capitals as different as Damascus, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and Tehran.

In contrast, the U.S. record is more troubled. It was the United States that invaded Iraq twenty years ago this week, unleashing chaos and violence across the region. It was also Washington that unilaterally blew up the international nuclear agreement with Iran—after the Obama administration had dragged its regional allies kicking and screaming to support the accord—setting Tehran on a glide path toward a nuclear weapons capability and increasing tensions in the Persian Gulf. The United States subsequently declined to defend Saudi Arabia and its Arab partners from Iran’s escalation in 2019 (ironically prompting Riyadh to later reconcile with Tehran), to say nothing of the fact that Washington has vacillated between pulling out of and leaning into the region across the last three presidential administrations.

Yet despite these doubts about U.S. reliability, and Washington’s concerns about perceived challenges from Russia and China, the United States must check its knee-jerk tendency to interpret all Russian and Chinese actions as coming at its expense. The Middle East is big enough for the United States, Russia, and China, especially since Beijing has a significant stake in regional stability so it can continue importing the region’s energy resources. The U.S. role in the region, as the UAE and Saudi Arabia continue to make clear, is not going away, but it is changing. Washington, therefore, needs to recognize that it should not and cannot try to do it all in the Middle East. Instead, it must reassess where its efforts can make the most positive difference, and where its most vital national interests truly lie.

Source: National Interest

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