New Delhi: Every year on August 8, the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mark ASEAN Day. This date was approved by the ASEAN Standing Committee at its annual meeting in May 2005.
ASEAN was founded in Bangkok on August 8, 1967, by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines, which signed the Bangkok Declaration. Later, this regional organisation was joined by Brunei (1984), Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997), and Cambodia (1999). ASEAN is one of the most successful regional organisations.
It has a broad network of various intergovernmental associations involving Russia and other leading world powers: the East Asia Summit (EAS), ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus). Promoting ties with ASEAN is Russia’s key foreign policy priority in Asia. The Russian Permanent Mission to ASEAN has been based in Jakarta since 2017.
In 2018, Russia-ASEAN relations reached the level of strategic partnership, resulting in closer coordination on current global and regional issues with the ten member countries at leading multilateral venues, including the UN. On July 26 and 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended annual ministerial events held by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Vientiane. He took part in Foreign Ministers’ meetings in the Russia-ASEAN format, as well as within the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum.
Russian President Vladimir Putin while addressing the Russia-ASEAN Summit on October 28, 2021 had remarked, “Strengthening ties with ASEAN and its member states has always been and remains one of Russia’s foreign policy priorities. I would like to point out that the positions of Russia and the ASEAN states on key global and regional matters are similar in many respects. Most importantly, we all support the expansion of equal and mutually beneficial cooperation in the vast Asia-Pacific space,”
