Official website of the President of Russia

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Vladimir Putin had a meeting with Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad.

The two officials discussed the further development of bilateral relations, in particular, trade, economic, military technical and humanitarian cooperation.

They also had a separate discussion on international and regional issues, including the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and collaboration at various integration associations.

The meeting was held on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Prime Minister, colleagues, I am honoured to welcome you to Vladivostok.

This is the first time that Malaysia is attending the Eastern Economic Forum.

Mr Prime Minister, we have met before, and I am delighted to see you again.

Malaysia is a priority partner for Russia in Asia. We are glad that relations between our countries are developing positively.

I hope that your meetings within the framework of this forum will be useful and interesting. Many colleagues have come here from nearly all regions of Asia and the rest of the world, from 74 countries, as far as I know.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to discuss our bilateral relations on the sidelines of this event.

Welcome.

Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad: Firstly, thank you very much for the invitation to participate in this Far Eastern Forum. This is also very significant for us because we have always wanted to look at Russia, not just at European Russia but also Eastern Russia. We are quite sure that we can have good relations with the eastern part of Russia because there are areas where we can gain from trade and also relations with Russia, in the east.

I am looking forward to hearing views of the participants in this forum. But like you, I would like to have a discussion on our bilateral relations. We see now a lot of interest being shown by Russian business organisations in Malaysia, to the point of wanting to set up a university, and also cooperation in the aerospace industry. It will be something we look forward to because since our decision to purchase Russian planes, there has not been much progress in terms of other areas of cooperation.

We are very much interested in Russian technology – in particular, with regard to the aerospace industry. And we think that we can also contribute to your presence in Southeast Asia and East Asia.

We always like to have a balance in the economic cooperation between the countries interested in investing in Malaysia. In the past we had more investment coming from Western countries and Japan. Now most of the investment is coming from China. And I think it is time that Russia, too, participated in the economic development of Malaysia. I hope in the course of this meeting we will be able to identify areas of cooperation.

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