BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 29. So far we did not see any negative impact of sanctions on Russia, but we don’t know how it will transform in a timetable, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said addressing the international conference under the motto “South Caucasus: Development and Cooperation”, Trend reports.
"We just recently had an intergovernmental commission in Baku, the Russian-Azerbaijani intergovernmental commission, on the 26th of April, and a broad range of issues was discussed about our future plans. So far, every year we had good results. We have growth of turnover. But, of course, with the current situation, we need to see what else we can do, because for our farmers the Russian market is the only big market and, of course, for Russian producers the Azerbaijani market is also of importance. We buy more from Russia than we sell, so we have a negative turnover balance. But, at the same time, our export to Russia grew last year. With the new situation, with these sanctions, of course, we need to see what will be the practical impact and you can imagine that we now have two countries under sanctions, two our neighbors – Iran and Russia. It is a very difficult situation, because how we can successfully cooperate and trade if there are sanctions and there are problems with money transfer and many other problems. Therefore, we need to see what will be the coming period decisions. But, our trade relations with Russia were pretty diversified. They covered agriculture, services, investments, not big amounts, but still, and many companies which work here. And, of course, the Azerbaijani community in Russia is very big. They also contribute to growth of turnover. So, so far we did not see any negative impact of sanctions on Russia, but we don’t know how it will transform in a timetable. What will be in six months or one year if sanctions remain. That is difficult to prognose," the head of state said.