Taking part in the meeting were Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Director of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, and Special Presidential Representative for Environmental Protection, Ecology and Transport Sergei Ivanov.
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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon.
Relations with the CIS member countries, in the post-Soviet space are a priority of our foreign policy course. Today we will discuss them.
I would like to stress once again that, of course, this is a key topic, as I have already said. We have a lot of initiatives here and a very good dialogue with our leading partners, extensive trade; we work with many of them within the EAEU and the CSTO.
Recent events show that all this work is leading to positive results and is much in demand. Today we will discuss ways to improve the mechanisms we have created in this area in recent years.
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