Military-Technical Cooperation - Most Promising in Russian-Slovak Relations

Moscow considers military and technical cooperation the most promising direction in Russian-Slovak relations, said the Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesman Alexander Yakovenko ahead of Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's official visit to Moscow that starts on April 7th.

"It would be in both countries' interests to unite efforts for repairing and modernising Slovak MiG-29 fighters, Mi-24 helicopters and creating an export variant of Yak-130 training aircraft," he pointed out.

Apart from this, bilateral cooperation in the energy and transport spheres also has a favourable outlook, Yakovenko believes. Thus, when YUKOS and Gazprom secured their investments in the Slovak oil and gas sector, it created good grounds for continuing cooperation in the sphere, with a perspective of starting an energy dialog between Russia and the EU.

Moreover, the countries are discussing a possibility of fulfilling a number of large investment projects to integrate the Druzhba and Andria oil pipelines, to modernise and complete the second stages of Jaslovske Bohunice and Mochovce nuclear power plants, and to build an underground in the Slovak capital, Bratislava.