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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Your Majesty, colleagues, friends,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Moscow.

Your Majesty, Jordan has always been a very important partner of ours in the Middle East. Last year, we celebrated the 55^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between our countries. You and I remain in close contact. And I am pleased to note that last year – although this may not be very much in absolute terms – our bilateral trade grew 3.8 times. We are very happy about this. Of course, we have matters to discuss, both bilateral and international.

We are very glad to see you. Welcome. Thank you for accepting our invitation to take part in the Valdai Club’s general discussion of the current agenda.

Thank you very much.

King Abdullah II of Jordan (transcript of the speech in English): Mr President, thank you very much for your kind words of hospitality, as always, and I am very grateful to be here and have this opportunity to exchange views on many of the challenges in our region.

As you mentioned, Mr President, the relationship between our two countries is 50 years old, but also our personal relationship is almost 20. And I think that that has been built on honesty and straightforward brotherly relationship between our two countries, one that we are very grateful for.

Again, I want to underline the importance of Russia in our region. Without the role of Russia on many of issues – whether it is the peace process, whether it is Syria and others – things would not be able to move forward.

So I understand the importance of the Russian role and we are very gratified of the strong presence and again your guidance on many of the issues that we will discuss today.

But I am here to say as always thank you for the tremendous support not only to Jordan, but the commonsense approach that you bring to our region.

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