Russian President meets with Chinese Foreign Minister

Vladimir Putin and Wang Yi met at the Konstantinovsky Palace in the presence of Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China to the Russian Federation Zhang Hanhui.

During the meeting, Vladimir Putin noted that since Xi Jinping's visit in March, which gave a new impetus to the development of bilateral relations, there have been great changes in the structure of trade and economic relations between Russia and China.

"It was a visit that gave a good impetus to the development of trade, economic and humanitarian ties. As for trade and economic ties, we recently stated this at a meeting with the Vice Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China (Zhang Guoqing), with whom I met on the margins of the International Economic Eastern Forum in Vladivostok: in the first months of this year, trade turnover exceeded $120 billion. And we have every reason to hope that we will, at any rate, approach the figure of 200 billion. According to Chinese statistics, as I understand it, it is even a little more than 120 billion in the first seven months"

Vladimir Putin President of Russia

The Russian leader also noted the success of the Year of Sports and emphasised that the next cross-strait year will be dedicated to the humanitarian sphere.

In turn, Wang Yi assured Vladimir Putin of China's unchanging friendly, partner position and noted the joint successes of the two countries. He also spoke about his meetings with Sergey Lavrov and Nikolai Patrushev and the agreements reached: "I would like to emphasise: no matter how the international environment changes, China is ready with the Russian side, in the spirit of implementing the important agreements reached by you and President Xi Jinping, to continue, strengthen mutual trust and continuously enhance business cooperation between us, as well as to build up the social base between our peoples and strengthen coordination in the international arena, jointly safeguard our common interests, as well as promote international justice to promote international governance, to develop in a more rational direction".

Vladimir Putin said he had accepted an invitation from the Chinese President to visit China in October as part of a major event to promote the One Belt, One Road international project: "This is fully and entirely in line with our interests as well. We are integrating, in fact, both our ideas of creating a large Eurasian space and the ideas of our Chinese friends within the framework of this programme "One Belt, One Road", and we are acting quite synchronously".

Wang Yi, for his part, said he was ready to listen to the Russian side's proposals for the third forum "One Belt - One Road", as reported by the Kremlin website.