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Photo: the Presidential Press and Information Office

President Dmitry Medvedev Remarks at News conference following First

Russian-Ukrainian Interregional Economic Forum

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, regarding the main outcome of today’s meeting, here in Gelendzhik we have
essentially established a new platform for cooperation, for exchanging views. We agreed in
Kharkov to hold these forums. The first interregional cooperation forum has just taken place
now. What was especially pleasing to see was that this was not simply a forum at which the two
presidents met, with an entourage of governors to sit for a while, exchange a few words and then
part ways. Today’s event was not of this kind.

The presidents simply capped this whole construction, but the productive discussions began
before we arrived. Our colleagues talked with each other and met with representatives of Russian
and Ukrainian state organisations. This has enabled us, as I said at the start, to revive cooperation
between our regions. This cooperation had ceased, been squeezed out of existence, but now we
are starting to see some fruits of our efforts. These are modest fruits so far. What results do we
have?
One of the governors said that trade between his Russian region and its partner region in Ukraine
had grown by around 70 percent. Of course it is good to hear this kind of figure, but at the same
time, we realise that we were essentially starting from practically zero, given the way
cooperation had shrunk. I hope that next year we will see further growth in this cooperation.

See also:

 Trip to Krasnodar Territory. First Russian-Ukrainian Interregional Economic Forum

October 4, 2010 → Trips around Russia

We just signed a work plan and programme for interregional cooperation. We are continuing to
work on the activity plan, and these documents will all open broad new opportunities for
developing our cooperation in all different areas.

In their discussions of various issues today, our colleagues expressed a number of concerns,
doubts and wishes. I am sure that everything that came out of today’s meeting will be
summarised and that we will find answers to all of these questions, in some cases quickly, and in
others perhaps not quite as quickly as we would like.

But the main thing, and I fully agree here with what the President of Ukraine said at the end of
the discussion, is that we have common vision now of how to proceed in our work. We can sum
this up as being that the regions in their cooperation should act freely, not shifting the
responsibility to the presidents and governments, but taking the initiative themselves and
working regularly, every day, because this kind of interregional cooperation is made up of tens
of thousands of contacts between people, numerous ties between organisations, companies, and
settling all kinds of border and formal issues. All of this should be arranged right now, and this is
the responsibility of our colleagues, the Russian Federation regional governors, their Ukrainian
counterparts, and the relevant state and federal authorities in our countries.

We met recently in Glukhov, perhaps we will come back to this meeting a bit later, and we
continued today the dialogue we began there. I think this is a successful format. President
Yanukovych will probably also have a couple of words to say in this respect. We agreed that
next year the forum would meet again. Our Ukrainian friends have already made this proposal.
Of course Russia supports this proposal. I think that will do for now.

PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH: Mr President, colleagues, friends,

President Medvedev and I have begun getting the mechanism of our interstate relations running
again. We have launched it and given it a good impetus, and this enables us to create real
cooperation mechanisms. Today, we launched this interregional cooperation mechanism too. We
have already drafted a plan and programme for our efforts. They will of course be added to and
expanded, but our regional governors have already set an implementation timetable for the
period through to 2016. Later, of course, it will expand further.

What is very important is that these programmes present very concrete projects and proposals
that President Medvedev and I are both ready to support, and to work together on finding
investment if need be. There are projects that we will carry out in Ukraine, and projects in
Russia, projects that will come together at our border, as it were, and then there are projects that
we will carry out together, such as the construction of the bridge between the two ports, Kerch
and Caucasus. We were discussing this project just now. It is already becoming reality. The
timetable for carrying out the studies has already been set, and we will set deadlines for the
design and actual construction too. There is no doubt that this project is necessary and that it will
go ahead.

The preparations for the big international events that our countries will host - Euro-2012 in
Ukraine and Sochi-2014 in Russia – are also of great interest. The Sochi-2014 project is of great
interest to us, especially as we have taken the initiative – and I hope for your support at the
international level on this, Mr President – of making a bid to host the 2022 winter Olympics in
the Carpathians. We will study your experience in this area, and in developing the Russian Black
Sea coast, for example. We have seen how Gelendzhik is developing splendidly. I used to come
here often and was very happy indeed to have this chance again today. First of all, I saw the
wonderful runway here. The plane made a completely smooth landing, just like in Europe. The
new airport, the well kept streets – it’s all wonderful.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: The governor is positively glowing.

VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH: Yes, and the projects that we heard about today fit very well with
the projects that we are planning and want to carry out. I think that they will complement each
other, and this shows what great potential our cooperation and the relations between our
countries have. We often get asked the question – it was put to me at the Yalta forum recently,
for example – “Who do you choose between Russia and Europe?” And I say in such cases, “You
ask Russia who it chooses – Europe or Ukraine?” This is not the right question. We are
independent countries and pursue independent and mutually advantageous policies, and we have
joint plans with our neighbours in Russia. These plans are of interest to us and we would not
carry them out to the detriment of our national interests. The plans that we have can only be to
the benefit of our national interests.

I therefore thank the forum’s organisers for their excellent work, and thank the regional
governors and President Medvedev for successfully organising in a short time this big event and
even giving us good weather for it.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Thank you. There were some problems with the weather yesterday,
but our hard work over these last few hours fixed this problem. Actually, jokes aside, the weather
yesterday was such that we thought the plane would not be able to land and we would have to
land in Anapa instead, but evidently…

VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH: There always has to be something to scare us off.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Yes, there’s always something, but evidently, seeing how useful this
event is, those who decide on the weather decided to let us land here.

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October 4, 2010, 17:00Gelendzhik