Maxim Ryzhenkov said: «Today the SCO has become an authoritative regional structure and is becoming a pillar of multipolarity in practice. It demonstrates substantial support for its countries by leveraging its advantages. Those are rich economic, technological, and industrial potential as well as human resources. We have to properly utilize these advantages in order to ensure seamless mutually beneficial movement of goods and services, workforce, and capital, to create efficient transport arteries and manufacturing cooperation for the benefit of the development of our countries and nations.»
Maxim Ryzhenkov is convinced that cooperation within the SCO space in such fields as the energy industry and high technologies will allow exploring new markets faster and forming energy independence and technological sovereignty, which in current conditions represents the most important investment in the accelerated development of the SCO member states. Strengthening the economic dimension makes it possible to ensure the security of the countries and make them more resilient to all the challenges and threats of today.
«The Shanghai spirit is more than words. It is the foundation on which we build cooperation and which allows us to respond to common challenges together. Mutual trust, solidarity, internal cohesion, and unity have become the hallmark of the SCO and have made it attractive to other states,» the minister noted.
In this context the role of China was mentioned. China is the state that stood at the origins of the organization, largely determined its philosophy, and became the locomotive of its institutional development. The contribution of Russia, another leading founding state of the SCO, is no less substantial. Russia consistently upholds the principles of equality and indivisible security and makes a considerable contribution to strengthening transport, logistics, energy, and food interdependence within the SCO.
According to the minister, the SCO has been built on accord and equality, on the principles of consensus and respect from the very beginning. «An unprecedented number of global challenges and threats affect regional security and stability. The evolving situation where the right of the strong rather than the force of international law dominates, where political pressure dominates, increasingly indicates the need to improve the operation of multilateral interaction mechanisms. This is why the demand for multipolarity is obvious. The demand for a fair world order that takes into account the interests of the global majority instead of only a small group of individual states is obvious,» Maxim Ryzhenkov noted.
The minister remarked that as it continues sliding toward self-isolation, Europe can no longer position itself as the progressive part of the Eurasian region. It has become a source of instability and tension today. «We can see it all in mass media images among other things. Because of that it seems quite logical to rely on uniting the states that are capable of engaging in dialogue for the sake of peace, harmony, and development,» he said.
