Vladimir Putin's opening address:
Ms Tymoshenko, colleagues,
Allow me to welcome you at the fourth regular meeting of the Russian-Ukrainian Committee on Economic Cooperation.
First of all, I would like to note that cooperation in the committee has proved to be effective. Work on priority directions of bilateral cooperation in the committee is considerably intensive and yields practical results. Needless to say, very urgent problems also arise in real life. It is enough to recall the January gas crisis. However, even this complicated matter was settled on the basis of compromise.
At the same time, this crisis became a catalyst of tensions in Russian-Ukrainian relations, something which is certainly a negative aspect.
It goes without saying that we are taking into account all kinds of signals from our Ukrainian colleagues from Kiev about the need to make our contacts positive. We are striving for that ourselves and are ready to work on a new, promising agenda of our bilateral relations in all directions, primarily in the economy.
We are hoping that mutual interests will always be considered - and we will build our Ukrainian policy on the same basis.
In this context, at today's restricted attendance meeting, we have already discussed confidentially with Ms Tymoshenko the declaration on modernizing and expanding Ukraine's gas transportation network, which was signed with our common European partners in Brussels. We have already made public statements on this score and held consultations at the energy minister level. This document does not even mention Russia as the main supplier of energy resources to Europe.
We are hoping to continue our discussion on this issue as well, all the more so since Ukraine's role of a transit country and our role of a gas supplier are of key importance for many consumers in European countries.
It would be appropriate to recall the sharp decline in bilateral trade in the first months of this year. Naturally, the global economic crisis was conducive to this. However, I believe that the problem is rooted in the absence of bilateral anti-crisis policy, and the existence of a whole number of outstanding problems, for instance, violation of the Russian owners' property rights.
Today, much is being said about seized property of Russian companies in the Crimea. On many occasions, we have discussed at length the property rights of Russian investors in the Kremenchug Oil Refinery and the Luganskteplovoz Holding Company. Our numerous appeals to the official authorities, to our Ukrainian partners to deal with such facts, are not given adequate attention. We touched upon this at the closed meeting today - without official support it is often practically impossible for foreign owners, and for foreign investors in a foreign country and economy to defend their rights.
Our negotiations on aircraft manufacturing is another matter. During our meetings with Ms Tymoshenko, we repeatedly discussed how we could combine our countries' potentials and assets. I hope this process will move forward more rapidly. I am confident that this is all the more likely because, considering the growing competition on the global aircraft-building market, we can remain competitive only by pooling our efforts in this direction.
This is all I wanted to say to begin with. I hope that we'll discuss these issues with our colleagues from both sides.