Azerbaijanis living in the Sverdlovsk region are not migrants; they are our people, and no one treats them as migrants, Chairperson of the Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk Region, Lyudmila Babushkina, said during a meeting with Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Russia, Rahman Mustafayev.
According to Report's Russian bureau, the Ambassador mentioned that this was his first visit to the Urals: "The Sverdlovsk region is a major industrial region of Russia. Since 2019, there has been an intergovernmental agreement between Azerbaijan and the Sverdlovsk region. We are interested in continuing this cooperation. The Urals is the largest scientific center of the Russian Federation. There are leading universities here, and we are interested in developing cooperation in this direction."
During the meeting, the parties discussed strengthening partnership relations.
"We are connected by strong friendly long-term ties in many areas. This includes trade, education, and culture. The tourism sector is developing quite well, and residents of the Sverdlovsk region gladly travel to Azerbaijan. But I am confident that our cooperation has great potential," noted Babushkina.
She spoke about significant laws operating in the region that can guarantee the stability of Sverdlovsk enterprises as international partners: "In particular, there is a law on food security that ensures annual increases in state support for farmers; legislative support measures for enterprises working under simplified and patent taxation systems; reduced tax rates for investment project participants and free economic zone, among others."
At the meeting, an agreement was reached on developing inter-parliamentary cooperation between Azerbaijan and the Sverdlovsk region.