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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Yang Jiechi, friends, it is a great pleasure to see you here in Russia.

We have known each other for a long time now and met on a number of occasions during your time in your previous post. I know what a big contribution you made as Foreign Minister to developing our bilateral relations, including our cooperation in the international arena.

I agreed with my good friend, the Chinese President, that we would do all we can to give our relations new impetus and quality and take them to a higher level. This goes for our economic ties too. China is Russia’s biggest trading partner today. It also goes for guaranteeing security and peace around the world. 

We are working well together in military technical cooperation and the military sector, as can be seen by the joint exercises between our armed forces units that just ended, or are probably still underway.

I hope very much that in your new capacity, you and the Russian Security Council will do everything possible to ensure that the plans we set as priorities for our work together are carried out. 

I ask you to convey my best and warmest wishes to President of China Xi Jinping.

Member of the People’S Republic of China State Council Yang Jiechi (translated from Russian): Mr President,

I thank you very much for finding the time to meet with my colleagues and me despite your busy schedule. President Xi Jinping pays great attention to the excellent working relations that you and he have developed and to your deep personal friendship too.

Let me start by passing on the best wishes of your colleague and friend, President Xi Jinping. I will definitely pass on your greetings to Mr Xi.

You met with me several times during my time as China’s Foreign Minister, and I am very grateful for that.

At your meeting with President Xi Jinping in March, you together outlined the main directions for further developing our bilateral relations and set the main cooperation priorities.

The big results that came out of this meeting have brought us some impressive successes in our relations. It is a great pleasure and honour to have this opportunity to meet with you here today in this beautiful city of Sochi, Mr President.

I can assure you that China will do everything possible to support your country in successfully organising the G20 summit. We are sure that your wise guidance and the efforts of all the parties involved will guarantee that the summit is of the very highest level.

Now, with our Russian colleagues we are working hard to prepare for your meeting with the Chinese President on the sidelines of the G20 summit. We think this will be another historic meeting between you that will give a strong boost to continued all-round, deeper development of our relations. 

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