Official website of the President of Russia

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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Mr President, I want to welcome you to Russia, to the Kremlin.

To start with a few words about the relations between our countries, we have good, serious, and deep-reaching relations. There is an important historical dimension to our ties. It is pleasing to see their steady and confident development today. Proof of this development is in the stronger intergovernmental ties and the social contacts taking place, and just as much so in our growing trade and economic relations too.

We set the objective not so long ago of increasing trade between our countries to $1 billion. I think that we will reach and surpass this figure over the next few years. Our bilateral trade shows confident growth and already comes to more than $75 million. This shows the potential for development and growth. This is a very good thing given the special nature of our relations. I am very happy to welcome you once again to Moscow.

President of Mongolia Nambaryn Enkhbayar: Thank you very much. Thank you for the time you are giving us, and for your hospitality.

First of all, I want to congratulate you on your inauguration as President of the Russian Federation. I think, hope and believe that this will be a time of very productive cooperation between Mongolia and Russia, continuing the cooperation that we have had over these last years.

I also want to congratulate you, of course, on Zenit’s victory in the UEFA Cup. I managed to watch the match in snatches and was pleased that a Russian team won the UEFA Cup.

As for our bilateral relations, there are indeed very close ties between our countries and historically, we have had very close cooperation. This is all the more evident as we prepare to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Khalkyn Gol next year. This was our common victory. We are happy that the former Soviet Union, Russia, the Russian people, made the greatest contribution to defeating those who sought to attack Mongolia and enter our territory. I think that, as President, I will put the celebrations of this event under my aegis. I would like to take this opportunity, Dmitry Anatolyevich, to invite you to visit Mongolia. Perhaps it would be possible to tie in this visit with the celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of our common victory at Khalkyn-Gol. I think this would be real confirmation that this is our shared history. We are working together very closely today and we will continue to work together actively within the framework of our strategic partnership and develop our mutually beneficial cooperation.

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you for the invitation, Mr President.

I want to take this opportunity to say that you are someone who has deep ties to Russian culture, Russian language and literature. This is something we naturally value very much, something that makes us very happy.

I would like to make use of this occasion to award you the Pushkin Medal.