Today, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks between the official delegations of the two countries. Shavkat Mirziyoyev emphasized that today Uzbek-Russian cooperation has reached an “unprecedented high level”, covering all areas.

The head of state said that Uzbekistan stands for the further development of active political dialogue and exchange, including expanding “systemic and intensive contacts” at the level of parliament, government, ministers, departments, provinces, the public, expert and businesses.

He proposed holding regular meetings of the joint commission at the level of heads of government and the intergovernmental commission by the end of the year.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev emphasized that Uzbekistan attached priority importance to expanding cooperation in the trade and economic area. According to the Statistics Agency, the two-way trade has increased by 30% since the beginning of the year; over the past seven years, this figure has increased 2.5 times.

“Today we agreed on a new target to bring the two-way trade volumes of $30 billion in the near future. There is potential and all the possibilities for this. We specifically talked about this,” the head of state said. In 2023, Russia dropped to second place among trading partners, ousted by China. Trade grew by 5.3% (in 2022 the growth was 22.9%) - from 9.38 billion to 9.88 billion US dollars.

According to him, a full-fledged trade mission of Uzbekistan in Russia will be launched in the coming months to facilitate the implementation of trade deals and economic projects.

“We consider it important to continue work at the expert level to assess and identify additional reserves to increase trade turnover, including within the framework of import substitution programs,” he noted.

The President said that today there were over 3,000 joint ventures and projects operating in Uzbekistan, the portfolio of cooperation projects is about $45 billion. In addition to the summit, new projects totaling over $20 billion were developed in the energy sector, metallurgy, petrochemicals, mechanical engineering, mining industry, agriculture, logistics, pharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and many other areas.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev called Russia a strategic partner in the supply of natural gas, oil and petroleum products. “There is an agreement to modernize the gas transportation system, increase the volume of supplies of gas, oil and petroleum products, and implement projects with leading Russian hydrocarbon processing companies,” the head of state said.

The head of state noted dozens of agreements on the scientific and practical implementation of joint programs and projects, the opening of centers and branches of Russian universities, including the Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

Earlier, Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that the parties would sign an “important agreement” on the implementation of a project for the construction of low-power nuclear power plants in Uzbekistan.