On today's international arena, intermunicipal cooperation organizations (associations, unions, etc.) encourage city partnerships in a vast variety of areas to provide for the cities' sustainable development, promote the values of people's diplomacy, cement trust, mutual understanding and friendship between peoples and nations.

At the same time, the latest tendencies in global politics and the new power balance emerging on the international arena will lead to further changes in the international relations.

• What changes will it bring in the international cooperation between cities in particular?
• What impact have these global changes had on the work of intercity cooperation organizations?
• What will they choose now as their priorities for further development in the area of sustaining international partnership between municipalities?

These and the other questions were discussed by the discussion participants – the Director of the Local Self-Governments' Association of the Kyrgyz Republic Bekturgan Orozbaev, the Head of the National Congress of Kazakhstan Local Communities Erkinbek Rakimbaev, the Executive Vice-President of the "Twin-Cities" International Association Sergey Paramonov, the Deputy Director General of the International Assembly of Capital and Major Cities of the CIS Yury Vasiunkin, the Director General of the Union of Russian Cities Alexandra Ignatieva and the Executive Director of the Volga Region Cities Association Vladimir Reprintsev.

The opening remarks were delivered by the Mayor of Volgograd Vladimir Marchenko. He called on the cities to come together and, by means of people's diplomacy, to oppose the threats they all have to face, to cement international friendship, to develop their partnership for the sake of their cities' well-being and their residents' prosperity in the multipolar world.

Mindao Yuan, Vice-President of Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign and China International Friendship Cities Association, recorded a video message for the discussion experts and pointed out that there are currently 154 partnership links established between Russian and Chinese cities. He called upon the experts to further develop their partnership despite the global changes on the world arena, to extend cooperation and continuously contribute to the new cooperation between cities to make the world a better place for all of us.

The discussion was moderated by Rasikh Sagitov, the Secretary General of the International Association "Eurasia Regional Section of the World Organization "United Cities and Local Governments". As the bottom-line for the panel's work, he concluded that in today's circumstances, intercity cooperation associations remain as relevant as ever, whereas cities are still able to preserve their cooperation ties and sustain their friendship.