A new AUKUS alliance between the US, the UK, Australia as well as the four-sided dialogue on security between the US, Japan, India and Australia (Quad) are directed at eroding the long-standing universal formats of cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region existing under the auspices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the 29th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy on Saturday, TASS reports.
The Russian top diplomat noted that "one of the most fashionable trends today is the so-called Indo-Pacific strategies that are invented by the United States," in particular, AUKUS and Quad.
"All of this follows the line of eroding the universal formats in the Asia-Pacific Region which existed for the past decades under the auspices of ASEAN," he noted.