Ilyas Umakhanov: Mehriban Aliyeva's visit to Russia is a landmark event of historic importance and scale - INTERVIEW

In an interview with Report, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Ilyas Umakhanov spoke about the visit of the first Vice-President of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva to Russia, the success of the anniversary Russian-Azerbaijani regional forum and mutual support of еру countries on international platforms.

First Vice-President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva has completed her visit to the Russian Federation a couple of days ago. How fruitful was the visit?

- I believe that this is a landmark event of a historic scale, because this is the first visit of the first vice president of Azerbaijan, respected Mehriban Aliyeva to Russia which took place at a very high level. Meetings were held with President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, with Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko. This visit was marked by the presentation to Mehriban Aliyeva of a high state award by Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

- Moscow has hosted the 10th Russian-Azerbaijan Interregional Forum What can you say about the importance of holding such events?

- The 10th Russian-Azerbaijani interregional forum was very successful, productive and fruitful. It was opened by Mehriban Aliyeva together with Valentina Matvienko. Such formats give a very strong impetus to the development of direct trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian ties. I am more than confident that in the very near future we will see the results of this interaction and cooperation both in increasing commodity turnover and in developing direct cultural ties between universities, regions, municipalities of the two countries. This is an extremely important area of our work, including the Federation Council, the Chamber of Regions.

- What unites Azerbaijan and Russia on international platforms?

- On international platforms Azerbaijan and Russia are united either by similarity, or by coincidence of positions on key issues of world politics. And this is reflected also in the interaction of the parliaments of the two countries - the State Duma of the Russian Federation and the Milli Majlis of the Republic of Azerbaijan. We interact within the framework of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, we interact in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and each time the delegations of Russia and Azerbaijan support each other very actively. We understand that with such regular intervals, some Western countries, Western politicians, parliamentarians are attacking our countries, trying to distort the real state of affairs, so this common consolidated position allows us to resist such attempts.