Official website of the President of Russia

Документ   /

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends, I am very happy to meet with you.

This year, we are celebrating the 70^th anniversary of our diplomatic relations. Although we cannot boast of a large trade volume, we nevertheless have good prospects.

Your nation is one of the world’s biggest gas producers, and you have good reserves. Gazprom is already working in your country and planning to extract gas next year.

But Gazprom is not the only company that is showing interest in your country. There is interest in the fields of energy, engineering and certain high-tech sectors. We are prepared to work together with you in military technology cooperation as well.

I am happy to see you.

President of Bolivia Evo Morales (retranslated): Mr President, thank you very much for agreeing to meet with us.

Our people express our condolences following the recent tragic events and our hearts are with you.

We look towards the future with great hope and a great deal of trust, and expect to further develop our relations and agreements. Gazprom representatives have already met with representatives from the Hydrocarbons and Energy Ministry as well as our companies.

But right now, we have another important issue: the issue of cooperating with Rosatom. For our part, we are providing investments. We will create a major centre in our country for studying nuclear technologies; it will have cutting-edge equipment, a research reactor, a cyclotron and gamma ray facilities. And I would like to note that we will use Russian technologies, while providing $300 million of financing. This will be the largest centre in all of South America.

Vladimir Putin: I know about this project and we will certainly support it on a government level.

<…>