Official website of the President of Russia

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President Vladimir Putin: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

It gives me great pleasure to receive the President of the Republic of Finland, Ms Tarja Halonen, in St. Petersburg once more.

We have not seen each other for some time, and it is now time to exchange opinions on current bilateral issues and problems of mutual relations between Russia and the European Union. As we have long-standing and stable good-neighbourly relations with Finland, we hope that Finland will make a positive contribution to the development of relations between Russia and unified Europe. According to our common assessment, Russian-Finnish relations are developing dynamically, and today we have once more confirmed our mutual desire to strengthen the traditions of good neighbourliness and cooperation between Russia and Finland.

Finland is one of Russia’s major trade and investment partners, and it pleases me that the Russian Federation holds one of the leading positions in the economy of our neighbour Finland. Trade turnover is steadily growing, and this year it may reach the record figure of 9 billion Euros. At one time, I was involved in border trade myself, and so I know how carefully Finland treats this issue. I would like to note that we will continue to give serious attention to these issues at state level, and will support regional ties and border trade.

Tomorrow, a delegation from the European Union will arrive in Moscow to discuss problems of developing relations, including with Russia, in the framework of the so-called northern dimension. We hope that the European Union will maintain its interest in these problems, and will treat the northern dimension with the necessary significance and attention.

Traditionally, a priority area has been cooperation in the energy sphere, but we believe that there are grounds to expect positive progress in other areas, such as telecommunications, metallurgy, timber and construction. Our countries have a serious intellectual and manufacturing potential, and successful experience of interaction in both traditional and new high-technology fields.

All this is cause to be positive and means that we can expect serious progress in the fields mentioned above.

I firmly believe that good-neighbourly and friendly relations between Russia and Finland will continue to work in the interests of the peoples of our countries.

I would like to thank Ms President for her invitation to visit Finland, and I will gladly make use of it.

Question: Mr President Putin, you noted the good state of Russian-Finnish relations. I would like to ask why this autumn, quite critical statements were heard from representatives of Russia, for example from special representative Yastrzhembsky, who talked of Finland as a country that is part of a bloc of countries that feels negatively towards Russia. Is there any reason for this, what is the explanation?

Mr Putin: I would prefer for the employees of my executive office to comment on what I say, and I do not set myself the goal of commenting on what employees of my executive office say. If you are interested in the opinion of a high-ranking Russian official or politician, I would address you directly to them – they are open for dialogue.

And in relations between neighbours, just like relations in a family, problems always arise. The question is how to solve these problems.

For example, I said that our economic ties are developing effectively. But they could develop even better, even more swiftly. I will give one example. The tariffs on electrical energy supplied from the Russian Federation to Finland are set by the appropriate Finnish authorities at a rate that is 13.5 times higher than for Finnish suppliers to the Finnish market. If we operated in a more liberal system, then average consumers in Finland, ordinary citizens of Finland, would pay much less for electrical energy and heating than they pay now, and industrial consumers would receive very noticeable competitive benefits on the European and international markets. This is just one example.

Problems always arise. So far, we have always been able to solve them with our Finnish colleagues on the basis of good-neighbourliness. Today’s meeting with Ms. President convinces me that in this sense nothing has changed, and we can continue to work further with our Finnish friends in this regime.

Question: I would like to ask your opinion on two problems. Firstly, on the possibility of Finland joining the decisions that have already been passed by a number of EU member countries on simplifying the visa regime for Russian citizens. And a second question. It is no secret that in a number of Baltic countries, unfortunately, there are still elements of discrimination against the Russian-speaking population. What in your opinion can be done to overcome this situation, especially in light of the fact that in a year Helsinki will become the chairman of the EU?

Mr Putin: As for visas, I can say that countries with such a large volume of cooperation as Russia and Finland are of course objectively interested in liberalising visa exchange. We would like – and here I agree with my colleague – solve this problem, above all with the entire European Union. We do not aim to circumvent Shengen rules. But in the Shengen framework, together with several of our partners we are finding possibilities to simplify the visa regime for individual categories of our countries’ citizens on a mutual basis. We see this as the first step towards solving the issue with the European Union as a whole. If the Finnish side is interested, then we are prepared for talks with our Finnish friends on this issue.

As for the situation of the Russian population in the Baltic countries, we have heard Mr Gil Robles and the people responsible for human rights in the European parliament, in the UN and the OSCE say that these problems exist, and we agree with this opinion. At the same time, we do not intend to inflame the situation or radicalise it, but we will not pretend that these issues do not arise. We will strive to solve all these problems in dialogue with our partners, problems that to a large extent have come to us from the past, and solve them in a calm, friendly manner, ensuring that commonly accepted norms of international law and humanitarian law adopted in Europe apply to the entire European continent. We hope that we will be able to solve these issues both with a unified Europe and with our partners in the Baltic countries, of course respecting their lawful interests at the same time.