Russia's MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s remarks at the Global Conference on Multipolarity

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Colleagues,

Friends,

You have heard Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks. He mentioned the main prospects for building a multipolar world and emphasised that this process is inevitable and objective. I will add that the new Russian Foreign Policy Concept has described, for the first time, and in a systematic way, the principles of a fairer, multipolar world arrangement and has set forth the goal of facilitating its creation.

I believe other states will eventually fix similar provisions in their own conceptual strategic documents. This depends, among other things, on the participants at our forum – influential political scientists and thinkers.

For my part, I would like to talk about the information-communication and partially the value-sense component of this process.  

We live in a world where the media and communications have started playing not just a key role but sometimes a decisive role. As you can see, we are in different cities, countries, continents and time zones, but nonetheless we are actually communicating in real time. All this has become possible not only because of technology (by the way, we are communicating on a platform developed in Russia, not a Western counterpart) but also because of the will of many different people all over the world. They are open and ready to communicate.

A uniform centre for information control that some Western elites are striving for does not and cannot exist. In today’s conditions, only polyphonic and compromise voices can be heard. Everyone’s voice can and should be heard as it is in our common “polylogue”.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with such an objectively fair approach. We know that the political elites in the US and Europe are using ICT for agitprop, provocation, propaganda and even indoctrination rather than for bringing unbiased information to broad public audiences. Moreover, they are doing this with absolute disregard for the standards and traditions of different countries and societies.  

Multilateralism based on the genuine sovereignty of nations and the diversity of civilisations will not only facilitate the settlement of political conflicts, the creation of a fair order for all and every participant in international communication, and a resistance to attempts to establish diktat and hegemony. It will also help create a truly democratic society free of political and ideological interference in domestic affairs of independent states.

There are not a lot of speakers out of the dozens of participants in this event who would support the agenda promoted by neo-liberal Western circles via the media they feed – a change in gender status, reverse LGBT discrimination and involving children and teenagers into gay culture. It is noteworthy that studies show that people in the US, Canada, the Netherlands and other countries in the so-called collective West are far from excited about their public figures and MPs who have moved these issues to the fore of their civic and political activities. Of course, we cannot support or even accept these ideas and won’t do this. As President of Russia Vladimir Putin noted at a recent session of the well-known Valdai Discussion Club, “The difference of traditional values from so-called neo-liberal values is that they are unique in each particular case because they stem from the traditions of a particular society, its culture and historical background. This is why traditional values cannot be imposed on anyone. They must simply be respected and everything that every nation has chosen for itself over the centuries must be handled with care.” This is how we understand traditional values. We are confident that the majority of humanity shares and accepts our approach.  

Colleagues,

I urge all participants in this polylogue to proceed from the premise that such events are playing an important synergistic function in building a multipolar system of international relations.

Have you noticed what importance Washington attached to two “summits for democracy” in 2021 and in 2023? True, these summits had nothing to do with democracy. We can not rule out that all the ideas expressed by the US-invited world leaders had been approved in advance in the United States. Frankly, the media impact of these summits was very modest. No matter how hard the Americans tried to draw universal attention to their initiative, people feel the artificial and laboured character of this kind of pseudo democracy. But the idea was clear – to show that the entire world or at least its bigger part supports US-dictated approaches. This is the synergy that Washington tried to achieve. Of course, its initial plan was doomed to failure. This is exactly why the second summit received much less coverage even in the Western media than the first one. The trend is clear.

Now look at our initiative that stands in sharp contrast against this backdrop – it is genuinely international. It is not imposed from above but was born in the politological circles of several countries at the same time. I would like to thank our Chinese comrades and our friends from Brazil for their conceptual formulation and bold promotion of this initiative in the international arena.

Colleagues, in conclusion I would like to thank you for your attention and to emphasise our willingness to continue supporting such projects. I am confident that we will hear many interesting comments and will be pleased to read the final collection of reports following this Marathon.

I wish all the best to the participants and listeners of this event.