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Taking part in the meeting on the Russian side were Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Deputy Prime Minister and Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan Alexei Overchuk, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov, and Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Aliyev, friends, colleagues,

We are delighted to welcome you to Moscow and to hold this meeting, as we agreed during my visit to Baku.

The President of Azerbaijan and I have just held a restricted format discussion, and we also talked informally last night, raising various issues related to the current status of our relations.

I would like to note from the start that our relationship is developing in a positive way, as we noted during the official visit to Azerbaijan. Trade between our countries now amounts to $4.3 billion, while our direct investment in the Azerbaijani economy exceeds $4 billion. There are numerous interesting projects in both energy and infrastructure, all of which are promising, dynamic, and viable, including bilateral and multilateral initiatives.

We are glad to have this opportunity today to discuss our current work on the sidelines of the CIS Heads of State meeting and perhaps adjust our progress, which is evident.

We are very pleased to see you. Welcome.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev: Thank you, Mr Putin, for the opportunity to meet today, and also thank you for the dinner yesterday. I would like to take this opportunity to belatedly wish you a happy birthday.

Since your state visit, the dynamics of our bilateral relations have been quite significant. There have been many contacts at the level of representatives of various agencies and government members in the context of implementing the decisions reached in Baku in August.

As you have noted, today we have a good opportunity to once again discuss these topics, as our agenda is quite full, and the projects we outlined in Baku in August require our constant attention and control, especially the new initiatives. So, today we can go over the agenda once again and determine specific steps to implement the agreements we reached.

Thank you again for the meeting.

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