The Russias Year in Azerbaijan will be held successfully, Ilham Aliyev, the Azerbaijani President, stated at a solemn opening ceremony of the Russias Year in Azerbaijan on Tuesday, Trend reports.
Our countries and peoples will become more close, know each other better, cooperate on different directions more actively. Thus, it will promote maintenance of good-neighbor, friendly and partnership relations by Azerbaijan and Russia in the future. It meets our interest, he said.
According to Aliyev, Russia and Azerbaijan is related with common history and traditional friendly, good-neighbor and fraternity relations, which develop and deepen. There is very active interaction between our countries in the political aspect, particularly, the issues of regional and international cooperation. We actively support each other at different international organizations, while the bilateral cooperation has firm base. We are interested in continuation of the active political dialogue. As a result of these joint efforts we speak about the Azerbaijani-Russian relations as relations of strategic partnership today. Such solid political base promotes development of the relations in other spheres, the Azerbaijani President stressed.
Aliyev stated that the goods turnover between the countries speedily developed. He noted that 2 years ago the Azerbaijani and Russian Presidents developed program on doubling of trade ties. Over the last 2 years the good turnover doubled and comprised $1bn. According to Aliyev, taking into consideration the rate of economic development in the both countries, it is not utmost achievement.
The head of the country also stressed that Azerbaijanis liked the Russian culture and language. The education in Russian is in the same level as it was in the soviet period. All Russian schools function, practically every state university has Russian sector.
Aliyev expressed gratitude to Putin and the heads of the Russian regions for arrival to Baku to participate in the opening ceremony of the Russias Year in Azerbaijan.