Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Italian Republic Paolo Gentilone will make a working visit to Russia on May 31 – June 1 at the invitation of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The upcoming visit by Mr Gentilone to Moscow is his first full-scale visit to Russia in this capacity since he took office in October 2014. At the top of the agenda are the ongoing extensive discussion of the current issues of international policy and security as well as consideration of ways to further develop Russian-Italian cooperation in line with the previous meetings of the two countries’ foreign ministers in Basel in December 2014, in Munich in February and in Moscow in May 2015, where Mr Gentilone represented Italy at the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

During talks on June 1, the foreign ministers will place great emphasis on the joint search for additional opportunities to resolve the internal Ukrainian crisis on the basis of strict observance of the February 12, 2015 Minsk Agreements. Ministers Lavrov and Gentilone will also discuss other foreign policy issues, in particular, the situation in Libya and Syria, issues pertaining to the Iranian nuclear programme, and Russia’s relations with the EU and NATO.

The ministers will touch upon the key issues of Russian-Italian relations in politics, the economy and culture, as well as relations through civil societies.

Also on the agenda is an exchange of opinions regarding the World Expo 2015, which opened in Milan on May 1, 2015 and features a pavilion of the Russian Federation with a display on our country’s contribution to global food security.

Both sides have expressed concern over the continuing negative trend in bilateral trade even though Italy remains an important economic partner of Russia. According to the Russian statistics, trade fell by 26.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the previous year. The volume of mutual trade in 2014 compared to 2013 fell by 10 per cent to $48.5 billion.

The Italian Foreign Minister’s schedule also includes a meeting of the co-chairpersons of the Russian-Italian Council on Economic, Industrial and Financial Cooperation, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and Paolo Gentilone, which will cover the prospects of Russian-Italian interaction in the economy in greater detail.

2014-15 saw a considerable slowdown in the relations between the two nations, as well as in the implementation of a number of significant bilateral agreements achieved through a manifold mechanism of Russian-Italian cooperation, against the background of Western pressure on Russia in connection with the Ukrainian crisis. The Italian leadership supported anti-Russian sanctions in line with the general policy of the EU and NATO.

Yet Rome is striving to avoid irreparable damage to the mutually beneficial partnership that has taken shape in the past years, and stresses its interest in preserving Russian-Italian relations, a vast resource worked on over many years, including maintaining a traditionally close and sincere top-level dialogue, which was confirmed during Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s visit to Moscow on March 4-5, 2015.