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The discussion covered additional security measures on the territory of the Republic of Crimea.

In addition, Vladimir Putin announced the decision to appoint former Education Minister Dmitry Livanov Special Presidential Representative for Trade and Economic Relations with Ukraine.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon.

Today’s meeting is in Crimea for a reason. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss and adopt additional measures to ensure the security of the Crimean peninsula, the Crimean people, as well as vacationers.

Obviously, we are meeting following a well-known incident, after disrupting an attempt by Ukrainian commando units to infiltrate the territory of Crimea.

Apparently, our partners in Kiev decided to aggravate the situation, and it is clear why they are doing this: they do not want to, or cannot for whatever reasons, honour the Minsk agreements and, secondly, they cannot explain to their own people the significant mistakes they have made in their socio-economic policies.

This method of aggravating the situation is not new. It has been used since time immemorial, sometimes successfully, but not always. I hope that this will not be the ultimate choice of our partners, and that common sense will eventually prevail.

For our part, while discussing the issues of additional security measures in Crimea, we should also say, and I would like to mention this once again, that we are not going to cut off relations. Despite the reluctance of the current government in Kiev to have full-fledged diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, we nevertheless will leave them opportunities to develop and maintain contacts.

For this reason, a decision was made to appoint former Education Minister Dmitry Livanov Special Presidential Representative for Trade and Economic Relations with Ukraine.

I assume Mr Livanov’s experience and, no less important, his perseverance, the way he tackles problems, will help him perform the functions assigned to him.

Let us now move on to the issues we are here to discuss.

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