You're reading: Azarov: Ukraine wants to revive cooperation with Russia in science and education

Ukraine wants to strengthen and expand cooperation with Russia in all spheres, particularly in science and education, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has said.

“We are committed to expanding and strengthening our cooperation with Russia at absolutely all levels, including at the levels of secondary and higher education. This is a strategic issue for us,” the Ukrainian government’s press service quoted Azarov as saying at a meeting with Russian Education and Science Minister Dmitry Livanov in Kyiv on Friday.

Azarov said that the Ukrainian government would continue to support cooperative relations with Russia in the sphere of science.

He said that Ukraine and Russia had over the last 20 years faced the same problems in the education sector. In particular, he said that it was necessary to restore close Soviet-era relations between science and education, between science, education and industry, and between basic and applied research.

“We need to restore relations between science and education and create research and education centers that will have a serious research and laboratory base, and on the basis of such centers we need to develop education. Here we have quite a large space for cooperation with Russia,” Azarov said.

Livanov, in turn, noted that Russia and Ukraine had established good prerequisites for the further promotion of cooperation in science and education.

“There is every opportunity for the creation of new forms of cooperation. There’s significant potential for enhancing cooperation in science. In science and innovation we had very strong cooperative ties at the level of ministries, academies of sciences and companies. I’m confident that we need to look for new forms of support for such cooperation and do all we can so that scientists could really interact,” he said.