- I'm Valery Sanfirov, radio Vesti FM and Mayak.
Vladimir Vladimirovich, you had a lot of meetings here in Singapore over the three days, some of them were unplanned. We saw that the Indian Prime Minister came up to you, very emotional.
Vladimir Putin: We are friends. So, sometimes…
- There were a lot of such…
- When people with such a level of relations meet, this is totally normal.
- Which meetings would you point out? We probably don't know about many of them. And won't the new Western economic sanctions hinder our cooperation with the South East Asian countries? Thank you.
- Well, any politically motivated restrictions that regard the economic sphere, do hinder the economic development. It hinders us, it hinders our partners, including the ones imposing the sanctions. But this can't stop the development, that is impossible. Neither the technological development nor the economic. So the partnership will go on.
As I have already told today in my speech, about 25% of our trading volume is with Asian countries. And the growth is significant: last year, the growth was 27%, it's about 200 billion dollars. The trading volume rises, the relations develop in all directions. These include the high-tech sphere. For example, you see how Singapore pushes the idea of smart cities. Where do the smart cities come from? They come from modern high-precision and digital technologies.
We will cooperate. We have already signed the agreement on the free trade between the Eurasian Economic Union and Vietnam. We are going to sign it with China and India too. We also have negotiations with Singapore. So these are the traditional relations with the countries of this region. Nothing can hurt or hinder them. We'll continue to work confidently. I have no doubt that the prospects are good.
- What about the meetings? Ah, meetings.
- Well, there were a lot of them. I met with almost all the partners, the Japanese Prime Minister, the President of the People's Republic of China, the Prime Minister of Singapore, the President of the Republic of Korea, I've just briefly spoken to the US Vice-President. Well, I met with almost all the participants.
