Question: What was the main aim of your visit here and what do you hope to achieve at these talks?
Vladimir Putin: We do not have to achieve anything at these talks, thank God, because they are about summing up the results, preliminary results for now, it is true, but nonetheless very significant results of work on creating a Common Economic Space. As you know, our countries’ parliaments have ratified the relevant documents and we consider this to be a very important step on the road to integration of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Now we have another important task ahead – that of formulating the rules that we will apply to our joint activity in the main areas of economic life. We have to draw up more then thirty agreements and we have to decide how we will move forward in this respect – will we draw up separate agreements and sign them, or will we come up with something on the lines of a common economic code. In any case, we need to review what has been done so far and give the process a serious new impetus so as to reach the new agreements we need by the end of this year. And that these things are useful and that we really do need them is of absolutely no doubt. There are day-to-day questions and any economic decisions our countries take have an immediate effect on our partners. We will also talk about this today. Overall, these are very concrete issues and I will not go into them now. I know what the Ukrainian President will say in connection with our decision in the energy sector, I’m referring to, let’s say, the rise in oil prices. But we have no choice but to do this in order to protect our market and our agricultural sector from unjustified export of too great an amount of oil and petroleum products. Of course, when we take decisions of this sort, we also have to take each other’s interests into account. This is essentially what creating a Common Economic Space is about. It is about minimising our losses in economic activity and making our economies more competitive on world markets.
Question: What can you tell us about the talks with the Presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan?
Vladimir Putin: We discussed precisely these subjects. We will have another discussion together this evening in an informal setting. We will continue this work, this discussion. On the bilateral level, we talked, of course, about the cooperation we have achieved so far. Our relations with Kazakhstan are developing very well, I would say, and trade between our countries has risen by more than 30 percent. The same is true of Belarus, though trade growth here is a bit lower, around 15 percent, but it is also a good result. In each specific case we have positive steps that will benefit everyone involved in economic activity, and we also have problems to resolve, and resolve them we will. That is what we have come here to do.
Question: Have you settled the problems in relations with Belarus?
Vladimir Putin: Many positive changes have taken place but there are also still many disagreements to resolve. It’s not possible to resolve everything so quickly, we’ve only just had our first meeting. We will do further work this evening and will continue tomorrow. In any case, we do not feel any great concern that there are still some issues to resolve. All of this will happen in the working order of things. We talked about the agenda for the government-level talks that will take place when our prime ministers meet on June 8. A meeting is scheduled in Minsk on June 8. We will talk in more detail today about their agenda so as to ensure that the meeting will be one of substance, will take place in a positive mood and will enable them to reach agreement on concrete issues.