MOSCOW: We Support India’s Permanent Candidacy To UN Security Council: Russia

MOSCOW: Russia on Wednesday said it supports India’s aspirations to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and also praised New Delhi’s deft handling of the contentious issues at the G20 Summit as a “true triumph” of its foreign policy.

The Security Council has 5 permanent and 10 non-permanent members. India has long been seeking a permanent membership at the UNSC, strongly calling for reform of the United Nations in line with the changing realities of the world.

The five permanent members are the UK, China, Russia, the US and France.

“We support India’s candidacy for joining” the UN Security Council as a permanent member, Sergei Lavrov said after holding talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar here. S Jaishankar is on a five-day visit to Russia.

Sergei Lavrov said the G20 Summit that took place in New Delhi earlier this year was a “true triumph of India’s foreign policy; it was a triumph of multilateral diplomacy, which has become possible, to a decisive degree, because the G20 Chair did not allow making the outcome document unilateral. The outcome document reflects the balance of interests”.

“This is a model of how to work within the G20 and, by the way, in the UN and the Security Council,” he said.

In G20, India managed to bring together nations with starkly divergent views on Ukraine. The G20 joint declaration that avoided direct criticism of Russia for its war against Ukraine is being described as a significant diplomatic win for India, the host of the summit.

The declaration garnered unanimous support from all G20 member nations, without a single dissenting note, with the key players, including the US, the UK, Russia and China, praising the outcome.