Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to thank our Angolan friends for the cordial reception and hospitality.

Our visit includes meetings with President of the Republic of Angola Joao Lourenco and Minister of External Relations Tete Antonio.

I have just had talks with my Angolan colleague. The ministers of natural resources and communications also took part in our meeting.

We were pleased to state that time- and history-tested relations of friendship between our countries continue steadily developing in line with the top-level agreements that envisage a build-up of our political, trade, economic, military-technical and humanitarian cooperation. We discussed all these issues in detail today.

The main result is our confidence in the need to give priority to trade and economic cooperation, primarily, preparations for a regular meeting of the Intergovernmental Russian-Angolan Commission on Economic and Scientific-Technical Cooperation and Trade. Promising areas for interaction include geology, mining, energy, telecommunications, IT, space and the agro-industrial sector. We hope the commission will meet in Luanda in late April.

The launch of Angola’s AngoSat-2 satellite allows us to continue cooperating in the peaceful exploration of outer space and other high-tech areas.

We positively assessed our humanitarian cooperation, especially in education. Angola remains very interested in the Russian language. In this context, we have increased this year’s quota of 150 education grants to 300 grants next year.

We agreed to expedite the coordination of several new intergovernmental agreements, including those on the opening of cultural centres and on the nuclear power industry, humanitarian missions and merchant shipping.

Our countries hold identical positions of principle on the development of international cooperation. We are committed to the principles of the UN Charter, including its fundamental principle of respect for the sovereign equality of states and non-interference in their domestic affairs.

We reaffirmed Russia’s support for UN Security Council reform with a view to increasing the representation of developing African, Asian and Latin American nations in this body.

Russia supports the consistent efforts of the African Union, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Angolan leaders, including President Joao Lourenco, in facilitating the settlement of conflicts in the region. The president of Angola plays an important role as the president of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.

We will continue supporting approaches to settling crises in Africa that are suggested by the African countries themselves, in the UN Security Council.

We discussed the implementation of the agreements reached at the first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi in October 2019 and exchanged views on the preparations for the second Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in late July of this year.

At the request of our colleagues, we shared with them our assessment of the latest developments in Ukraine. We drew their attention to the West’s actions. For many years, the West has created pretexts for the direct use of Ukraine as a tool in a hybrid war against our country and for the holding of an overt colonial policy towards Russian speakers. We are holding a special military operation with the express purpose of curbing this illegal and overtly racist course of the Kiev regime and preventing the emergence of a direct threat to Russia on the territory of Ukraine. We regularly inform the world public about the details of this operation.

Today’s talks confirmed the importance of a regular, trust-based, comradely and sincere dialogue between our countries. We hope to continue this during a regular visit by my Angolan colleague, Tete Antonio, whom I invite to the Russian Federation.