On April 7-9, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Angola, Jorge Rebelo Shikoti, paid a working visit to Moscow. With the assistance of the Department of Africa of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the Embassy of Angola in Moscow, the interview of J. R. Shikoti published below was organized for our magazine. Question: Mr. Minister, how do you assess the results of the visit? Answer: Before answering your question, I will say that I visited Moscow for the first time almost 20 years ago. Over the past years, Russia has undergone major changes. You now have a prosperous country, a different, open society, life has become better, people have more optimism, everyone has hope for success today and a successful future. At the meeting with the Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of Russia Sergey Donskoy, who is co-chairman of the Russian-Angolan Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation and Trade, we reviewed the state of relations between our countries - what has been done and what is to be done in the coming years. In particular, in the economic sphere, in the activities of Alrosa, in the development of the country's infrastructure, in the field of fishing, in the field of education. I consider it important for cooperation to open a credit line for the Angolan government by the Russian VTB Bank. I paid special attention to trade relations, as the trade turnover between our countries remains at a very low level. Touching upon my meeting with my counterpart Sergey Lavrov, I would like to note Russia's openness and willingness to cooperate not only with Angola, but also with other African countries. We discussed the current state and prospects for the development of our bilateral relations in various fields. For my part, I emphasized Russia's increased prestige and political authority in the international community. Russia has a strong and clear position on a number of major global and regio ... Read more