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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends.

I warmly welcome you to St Petersburg. We saw each other not long ago in Kazan on the margins of a sporting event. You have accepted our invitation and are participating in the  Background information St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) St Petersburg International Economic Forum. We are happy to have you here.

Admittedly, the overall trade numbers have been modest so far. However, this year we saw a noticeable growth compared to last year, which is good.

We are grateful to you for what you do in the spiritual sphere, and in supporting our ties through the foreign ministries. You are aware of our position on the Dayton Accords. It remains unchanged: only the powers that are laid out in these international legal documents provide the basis for not just preserving the situation, but improving and strengthening it. We will contribute to that in every possible way.

I am aware that we have many other issues to discuss, and we welcome the opportunity to do so.

Welcome, Mr President.

President of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik (as translated): Mr President, thank you very much for the invitation, for the opportunity to come to this year’s forum. My compliments for its excellent organisation.

It is indeed a great opportunity for me to meet you again, thank you very much for our meeting again after two or three months.

I also wanted to thank you for Russia’s consistent position in the context of the Dayton Peace Agreement. I believe that your country, as a guarantor of the Dayton Agreement, is the only one who has remained loyal to the true principles of Dayton, as the agreement is falling to pieces through the fault of the West, its entire implementation is stalling.

The current situation in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina is in fact the following. There is a legislatively prescribed constitutional order, but in reality we have something quite different, which is absolutely contrary to the Constitution in terms of law that has been taken away from the Serb people of the republic.

Thank you for your principled position and behaviour and for your understanding in the context of the recent UN General Assembly meeting, where once again Bosnia and Herzegovina unconstitutionally put forward initiatives regarding Srebrenica. The West used this opportunity and showed that it was incompetent: although 84 countries were in favour of the resolution, 109 countries demonstrated that in fact they did not support it, because, exactly as you and your representatives said, it does not contribute to mutual understanding and reconciliation, but only brings additional problems to Bosnia and Herzegovina. So we feel some satisfaction that there was not even a simple majority of countries that voted in favour. This shows that there is an awareness of what is happening in the Balkans.

I wanted to tell you that all of our earlier agreements are being implemented, thank you very much for that. I believe that the agreements we reached today at our meeting with Russian Railways with your support will be implemented at all accounts, both in the context of the construction and modernisation of our railways, as well as many other projects.

In these externally aggravated circumstances, I would like to tell you that we remain completely, on principle, adamant in denying pressure to join the sanctions against Russia. I am not even talking about how many demands are being made against me on this issue. But I see that Western partners are quite nervous on this issue and insist on very many things.

In any case, our relations are very good. I believe that we don’t have a single hard issue pending, and we should continue to cooperate on all other issues as we have done so far.

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