Jakarta. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday told his ASEAN counterparts that Russia’s war against Ukraine was actually against the principles of the Southeast Asian bloc’s non-aggression pact.

Blinken is currently in Jakarta for a series of foreign policy talks. At a ministerial-level meeting with ASEAN, Blinken brought the forum’s attention to ongoing Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, which the US finds to have violated ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC).

“We must push for a just and lasting peace towards Russia’s war in Ukraine. A war that violates the principles at the heart of the ASEAN TAC and the United Nations Charter,” Blinken said at the US-ASEAN post-ministerial conference in Jakarta on Friday.

“It is harming, not only Ukrainians, but people across this region and around the world by exacerbating food and energy crises,” Blinken said.

ASEAN in 1976 established the TAC as a legally-binding code for inter-state relations within Southeast Asia and beyond in a bid to promote perpetual peace. This peace accord has gone through several amendments to enable accession by states outside Southeast Asia. Russia in 2004 acceded to the TAC, while Ukraine has also done the same in 2022.

The US government reported that the US had invested more than $42 billion in security assistance for Ukraine since Jan. 2021. This includes more than $41.3 billion since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov is also in Jakarta to attend ASEAN-related dialogues. 

ASEAN on Thursday held a ministerial meeting with Lavrov during which Indonesia called for cooperation on food security with Moscow. ASEAN plans to release a leaders’ declaration on food security at the 43rd ASEAN Summit in September. Indonesian senior diplomat Retno Marsudi said support from Russia —a global wheat and fertilizer producer— would be pivotal to this initiative.