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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends,

Welcome to St Petersburg. I want to start by saying a few well-known facts that are nevertheless very important. Russia and Mozambique are bound by strong links of friendship and cooperation that took shape during the times when the people of Mozambique fought for their independence. We established our diplomatic relations in 1975.

Mr President, we value and share your ambition to strengthen the multidimensional ties between our nations.

Russia and Mozambique are advancing their political dialogue. Last May, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is sitting to my right, visited Maputo, and in July, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev also visited your capital.

The Russian and Mozambican parliaments maintain active contacts and exchange visits. Our legislative bodies founded friendship groups. The All-Russian political party United Russia and the Mozambique Liberation Front, the party that you lead, have also established links.

The trade between our countries grew by 14.5 percent in 2022. In January-April 2023, the positive dynamics persisted, with 35-percent growth. We have noted good prospects in gas production, geological exploration, electricity generation, agriculture and fishing.

The Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation is focused on strengthening trade and economic relations. We are expanding the legal framework of our bilateral cooperation. Documents on intellectual property, geological projects, fishing and innovation will be signed on the sidelines of this summit.

We continue to assist Mozambique with training qualified personnel at Russian higher education institutions. About 3,000 Mozambicans have graduated from Soviet and Russian universities. Since 2020, we have more than doubled the quota for tuition-free study of Mozambican citizens in Russia. In the 2023‒2024 academic year, we will allocate 75 scholarships.

Mr President, we value constructive collaboration with Mozambique in the international arena, including support by Mozambican colleagues for Russian initiatives at the United Nations Organisation. In 2023–2024, Mozambique is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. We are expecting to coordinate our actions at the UN Security Council still further and collaborate effectively to address important global and regional issues. Our foreign ministries have already organised consultations on the relevant issues.

Mr President, friends, welcome to St Petersburg once again.

President of MozambiqueFilipe Jacinto Nyusi (retranslated): Thank you very much, Mr President, colleagues.

I can confirm that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Maputo, and we were delighted to welcome him there.

Mr Putin, first of all, I would like to thank you for the invitation and for another opportunity to visit your wonderful country and this magnificent city. You were born in this city, and I can say honestly that I hold it dear.

This summit is taking place at the highest level, and we are happy that we can discuss issues of cooperation between our countries today.

I would like to note once again that, as Africans, we are grateful for this opportunity to express our opinion. At the same time, I would like to publicly thank you for the support accorded us when our country was elected a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. Indeed, this is very significant: we were elected unanimously. This amounted to serious support. Indeed, this is very important for us.

We have extremely well-developed political and diplomatic relations. Various visits involving Russian delegations took place in Mozambique, and all our discussions were of an in-depth nature. I would like to note the work of the Russian Ambassador in Maputo who collaborates with our Ministry of Foreign Affairs very closely, and he addresses multiple issues that exist.

Our countries maintain very strong cooperation in a number of spheres, primarily defence and education. Russian enterprises operate on the territory of Mozambique. Mr President, I would like to thank you for all this in my opening remarks.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

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