Official website of the President of Russia

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President Vladimir Putin: Good evening, dear Yulia Vladimirovna!

As we agreed, after Ukraine's parliamentary elections and the formation of the government, we have continued contacts at virtually all levels. You certainly know about the intergovernmental consultations that were held recently. In my opinion, they were very productive. We agreed on a number of issues that seemed problematic at first glance. In fact, when we began to discuss them, it became clear that the problems were solvable and that in effect there were no profound disagreements between us.

As you know, the volume of our interaction is very high and continues to grow. Despite our disputes on some issues, our volume of trade is increasing annually and at a significant rate, since it is growing in practically all areas. Of course we would very much like, for ourselves as well as for our other partners, more attention to be paid to the diversification of our ties. The prerequisite for this is a greater degree of cooperation among our businesses, something which we will fully support.

Finally, another area of our interaction is joint investment. We know what large-scale plans your government has set for itself. However — I said this to the Ukrainian President I hope to discuss this issue with you — we would very much like to see our investors, Russian investors, subject to the existing Ukrainian legislation and operating in circumstances that are no worse than those of other investors. I perfectly understand the intentions of the government of Ukraine to bring everything into line with the principles of justice, both social and economic. But, let me repeat once again, the most important thing for us is that Russian investors are in exactly the same position as any other investors, including Ukrainian ones. I think that we will be able to discuss this and other issues related to our cooperation in detail. Welcome. We are very glad to see you in Moscow.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko: Thank you very much! I want to thank you for wanting this meeting and finding time for it. The joint work of our two governments has literally just been completed. We discussed in great detail all aspects of the implementation of the action plan, which you and our president approved. The way that that cooperation has developed and the exchanges today have gone bodes well for the relative success of our work.

For the first time our two governments set themselves a goal for every area of our activities. This time our planning didn't involve the signing of a whole bunch of new documents, but rather the establishment of one comprehensive plan. We set targets in every area, which is important because this yields results and gives rise to an absolutely new quality of partnership in all the activities which you mapped out in a meeting with our President. And we have agreed that already in April all eleven commissions will have completely agreed on priorities. I think that this will help our cooperation take on a qualitatively new aspect. We would very much like to see Ukraine and Russia really take advantage for many decades of the enormous potential of our joint achievements. Our government will work to make sure that this becomes a reality.

Vladimir Putin: So you are generally satisfied with the way today's negotiations with the government of the Russian Federation went?

Yulia Timoshenko: Yes, I can say that we discussed a lot of issues. And there is not a single issue on which we had very profound differences. We think that all the questions are in working order. We can resolve them.