Official website of the President of Russia

Документ   /

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Nazarbayev, friends, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Moscow.

Our strategic partnership is developing steadily, in spite of the difficulties in the global economy, which have had an impact on the dynamics of growth in our country. Nevertheless, we continue to work on the convergence of our policies, including in the sphere of customs and technical regulations, and in other areas. All this inevitably leads to a positive effect. I am sure the impact on our economies would have been much greater if we did not have all those agreements we had put in place earlier and which serve as guidelines for our efforts today.

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to see you and hold these talks.

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev: Thank you, Mr Putin, for finding the time to meet with me.

We traditionally meet before the New Year in Moscow, this time to discuss the outcomes of the Eurasian Economic Union’s work. This is also a good opportunity to congratulate all Russians on the upcoming New Year and wish them success and prosperity in every home.

We have completed the first, difficult year of the Eurasian Economic Union, finding ourselves in this crisis, but we knew that these costs would come. Nevertheless, I feel that we did the right thing and we must move forward.

It is true that overall, all the nations’ GDP has declined by 30 percent and trade has decreased, but our communication, open borders and joint enterprises play a very large role and we will talk about this today at the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council meeting. We will also discuss the situation we are seeing today. Russia is involved in Syria and other countries, the Turkish issue – I think we will talk about all these matters at the CSTO meeting.

As for our bilateral relations, I made a visit to Russia this year, you made a visit, and the interstate commission is working very actively; I am grateful for this. We can say that there are no bilateral issues. At the Supreme Council meeting, we should probably discuss ways to continue developing the Eurasian Economic Union in view of the newly created Transatlantic and Trans-Pacific partnerships. We also have some issues that need to be resolved.

<…>