Official website of the President of Russia

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Prime Minister, colleagues. I wish you a warm welcome.

We will meet first in narrow format and then continue our discussions with our colleagues in expanded format. Let me start by saying that despite the current problems and the drop in trade, we are happy with the nature and quality of our relations.

Hungary is our longstanding, reliable partner and we hope very much that the plans we discussed a year ago, during my visit to Hungary, will move forward and become reality.

Thank you for accepting our invitation. Welcome!

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban (retranslated): Mr President, thank you for this opportunity to be here. On behalf of the Hungarian people, I want to pass on our best wishes to you and the Russian people.

I want to thank you for all you are doing for the friendship between our two countries, despite the current difficult times. I thank you for this chance to review and examine our bilateral relations.

I think I can say with all confidence that we worked so hard precisely to preserve all that was positive in our relations. We all want to see normalisation of Russian-European relations. This is in the interests of our bilateral ties too.

We have accomplished quite a bit since last year, and I want to say that we will continue working towards building the friendliest possible relations between the Russian and Hungarian peoples.

Thank you very much for this chance to be here today.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

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