Baku, September 27, AZERTAC

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin have held a one-on-one meeting.

The Azerbaijani and Russian presidents made speeches at the event.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said:

- Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich! Please allow me to welcome you to Azerbaijan once again. You are welcome! We are always very glad to see you.

Today's visit is quite special. We are participating in the work of the inter-regional Russian-Azerbaijani forum for the first time. It brings together a record number of participants – about 1,000 people, which is evidence of a great interest in this event.

We met in Sochi earlier this month and are meeting in Baku today, and this is a clear indicator of the level of our relations. We actively cooperate in the political sphere, in economic, transport, energy and humanitarian spheres, and we are seeing great progress in all areas.

We have just said this to the participants of the forum, thereby giving them another impetus to work even harder and advance our cooperation further.

Russia for us is a very important and valuable partner, a friend, a neighbor with which we have the highest level of relations. I think that in the coming years we will only follow the path of building up our cooperation, creating even better conditions for the businesses of our countries and strengthening cooperation in all areas.

Welcome again and thank you very much for this visit!

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President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin said:

- Dear Ilham Heydarovich! Thank you very much for the invitation to Baku and for the opportunity to visit the world judo championships. I can see that everything has been organized at a very high international level, that the organizers and the International Judo Federation led by Mr. Vizer are pleased.

They have just told me how professionally everything has been done here. This is a great contribution to the development of world sports, not only judo but world sports in general.

And, of course, our participation in the meeting of the regions today's is also an important part of this short working visit. Indeed, we recently met in Sochi but, bearing in mind the high level and scope of our relations, there is always something to talk about.

We will also communicate on the sidelines of the CIS summit, but it's certainly great that there is an opportunity to take advantage of this situation and talk about bilateral relations.

We noted back in Sochi that our relations are developing positively both in economic and other areas. It is very important that the impulse that was given by our interaction during your visit to Russia and by the documents we have signed is not lost. The documents should work. I think we will talk about that today. Thank you.

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The presidents then continued their talk at the tea table.