On 18-20 February 2018, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley made a working visit to Moscow.

During the visit, Mr. Beasley met with Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief Vladimir Puchkov, Deputy Minister of Finance Sergey Storchak, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Evgeny Gromyko, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes Andrey Makarov and Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations  His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion.

The Russian Foreign Minister and the WFP Executive Director discussed a wide range of bilateral cooperation issues and Russia's further involvement in the Programme's humanitarian projects.

Mr. Lavrov emphasized that our country has a longstanding relations with the WFP. From 2010 through 2017 Russia made voluntary contributions to Programme’s projects that totaled $370 million. Minister Lavrov expressed interest in deepening cooperation with WFP as the latter was enjoying a high reputation among the donors and the recepients.

Mr. Storchak and David Beasley signed a Memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and WFP, which foresees further strengthening of our cooperation while realizing WFP’s country strategic plans as well as Memorandum on realization of the Second phase of the Project on augmenting WFP’s global overland transport fleets by Russian  trucks “KAMAZ”.

February 21, 2018