You're reading: Estonian minister content with economic ties with Russia, wishes similar results in politics

TALLINN - Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet is satisfied with the practical development of Estonian-Russian cooperation.

"If we look at the practical aspects of the past five years, such as economic relations, tourism or professional relations in other spheres, they work well. Despite the harsh rhetoric heard from time to time Estonian-Russian trade turnover has steadily grown over the past few years and Russia now holds third place in Estonian’s trade turnover with 11% which is the same as in Finnish-Russian trade turnover," Paet said on Estonian radio on June 5.

He said that the annual increase of about 50% in the number of tourists coming from Russia indicates that ordinary people want to travel to Estonia and "therefore there are no reasons to say that we should be acting in some other way with regard to Russia."

"We don’t want anything impossible from Russia. If you look at bilateral things, we would want agreements necessary for both sides to be signed. Some of them appeared over the past couple of years, for instance, on pension insurance," the minister said.

The only sphere, in which there is place for improvement, are relations at the highest political level, he felt. "I wish normal relations with Russia, why not even good ones also at the political level, but this requires goodwill on both sides," Paet concluded.