A regular meeting was held within the framework of the Intergovernmental Committee on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation between the Republic of Serbia and the Russian Federation. The co-chairs met before the session and I spoke with the Russian co-chair, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Yury Borisov. At today's meeting, we agreed that the upcoming session of the Intergovernmental Committee will be held in Kazan, in March.

We evaluated the development of economic relations positively. The volume of trade will exceed 3 billion dollars, which is a good indicator of the trend of increases every year.

We also exchanged information regarding cooperation in the field of energy. We received information on the course of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in connection with the gas issue, which is extremely important for us. This gas route is of major significance for us as it is the only one that leads to Serbia.
We discussed other projects in the field of infrastructure, especially railway and agriculture. We expressed satisfaction with the signing of the agreement on expanding the free trade zone to include all Eurasian Economic Union Member States.

We positively evaluated the development of our economic relations and concluded that preparations for the upcoming session of the Intergovernmental Committee should start immediately in order to assess projects on which we can collaborate during the upcoming period.

Following the meeting with Minister Borisov, I had talks with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov.

We emphasized once again that our political relations are on an exceptionally high level and that they have reached perhaps even the highest level in recent history. We agreed that the meeting between President Putin and President Vucic in Sochi was extremely important and that it reaffirmed once again our mutual friendship. President Putin visited Serbia at the beginning of this year. President Vucic met him in China and later in Sochi and Prime Minister Medvedev visited our country. These are good indicators of a dialogue at the highest level.

We exchanged information on current political developments in the international arena. I informed him about the situation in Kosovo and Metohija, major prevailing issues, and obstructions from Pristina. I especially drew attention to recent declarations from Pristina concerning threats of war unless Serbia recognizes Kosovo's independence. All of this threatens to destabilize Kosovo and Metohija. The dialogue has ceased and it will not continue until the tariffs are lifted.

Minister Lavrov will visit Serbia at the end of March or the beginning of April on which occasion we will continue our regular talks and cooperation.

I expressed my gratitude for Russia's support to Serbia concerning the issue of Kosovo and Metohija, in international organizations and through its voting in international forums. Russia has always been on Serbia's side and this is of vital importance to the defense of our territorial integrity and sovereignty.

We had extremely important meetings held in a positive tone, which is an indicator of the quality of our relations, the Head of Serbian Diplomacy stated following his meetings in Moscow.