AKIPRESS.COM - Ensuring good-neighborly relations with Central Asian countries is among Russia's top priorities, Russian Security Council (SC) Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said, Tass reported.

He recalled that this is reflected in the new version of the Foreign Policy Concept of Russia approved by President Vladimir Putin in March of this year.

"Ensuring stable, good-neighborly relations with Central Asian states is among Russia's undisputed priorities," Patrushev said at a meeting of secretaries of the Security Councils in the Central Asia-Russia format.

Secretaries of the Security Councils of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Russia are meeting on Friday in Almaty.

Previously, meetings in this format were held at the level of heads of state and foreign ministers. The dialogue mechanism was launched at Russia's initiative in 2019. Since then, six ministerial meetings have taken place.