Official website of the President of Russia

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President of Russia Vladimir: Mr Prime Minister, colleagues,

Allow me to welcome you in Vladivostok.

We remember your previous visit to Russia and are working according to the plan that we put together during that visit.

Relations between our countries are steadily developing. For the first time in history, this also applies to cooperation between our defence departments.

We are developing cultural cooperation. We have launched an unprecedentedly large event – cross years of Russia in Japan and Japan in Russia.

Our trade is growing: it went up last year and increased by another 20 percent in the first half of this year. Indicatively, Russian exports of engineering products grew by 90 percent and textiles by 14 percent. These are good figures.

Today we visited an enterprise with Russian-Japanese investments – the Mazda plant. It produces not only cars but also assembles engines, all of which are exported.

We are very glad to see you. We are sure that today’s meeting and the stay of your representative delegation that includes over 200 entrepreneurs will further benefit our bilateral relations.

Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe (retranslated): Mr President, I am glad to meet you here in Vladivostok for the third year in a row.

Our relations are steadily developing in accordance with our agreements. Only three months have passed since our last meeting. Our agreements, such as the ones on bilateral foreign ministry and defence department consultations in the so-called two plus two format, are being carried out one after another. Charter flights allowing former residents of the islands to visit ancestral graves continue. So our relations are developing.

I am pleased to note that as a result of our joint participation with President Putin in the opening of the cross years of Russia and Japan at the Bolshoi Theatre in May we managed to get our cross years off to a good start.

Japanese culture is also popular. To my knowledge, the Kabuki Theatre will perform in Moscow and St Petersburg. This greatly improves mutual understanding between our people. We also have other events.

I am glad that the teams of our countries played with great success at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. I would like to congratulate you on the success of this event.

Today I would like to conduct an honest exchange of views on bilateral issues, including the economy as well as international tasks – how we will cooperate with Russia.

I would also like to talk about our historical task – the problem of signing a peace treaty.

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