Press statements and answers to journalists’ questions following Russian-Italian talks
May 17, 2017
14:40
Sochi
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen,
I want to start by noting our increasingly frequent meetings with our Italian partners and friends. Last month, we received President Sergio Mattarella in Moscow, and today, we had substantive and productive talks with Italian Prime Minister Mr Gentiloni.
Italy has traditionally been one of Russia’s major partners and our countries seek to build constructive relations based on equality and respect for each other’s interests.
We discussed the whole range of cooperation areas during the talks today, and outlined concrete plans for further development. We gave priority attention to promising areas for economic development.
Italy is one of Russia’s major trade partners. Our bilateral trade came to around $20 billion last year. Of course, as a result of the circumstances we know, this figure is considerably lower than the peak figure we had in 2013, but we do have grounds for hope because we saw bilateral trade growth of close to 30 percent at the start of this year.
To be continued.