By Kester Kenn Klomegah, GNA's Moscow Bureau Chief
MOSCOW, Russia, Jan 18, GNA – Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has held high-level discussions with Zimbabwe's President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, at the Kremlin, on ways of deepening ties between their two countries.
They also focused on pressing international and regional issues.
President Mnangagwa was in Moscow for a three-day official.
He had earlier, gone to Belarus, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan before attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Mnangagwa became Zimbabwe's president in 2017 - replaced Robert Mugabe, who had ruled the country for 30 years.
Over the years, Russia and Zimbabwe, have maintained strong cordial relations, and the vis1t to the Kremlin, was to reinforce the already solid relations.
President Putin said Moscow would like cooperation between them to be mutually beneficial, a win-win, for both countries.
"You won a convincing victory in the election fairly recently. The people of your country expect effective work.
“We are ready to do our utmost to make sure that cooperation between our countries benefits our countries, our peoples’, that it makes a weighty contribution to the implementation of the plans and the programmes, which you have outlined for yourselves.".
On his part, President Mnangagwa said "there is a very long history of cooperation between Zimbabwe and your great country".
He spoke of the support Russia’s gave to Zimbabwe during its struggle for independence and the training of the country's military.
"You, as a senior brother, you can hold my hand as I try to develop Zimbabwe.
“Zimbabwe has been suffering from sanctions imposed by the West for nearly 20 years," he added.
The two nations signed a range of agreements for implementation of a joint project on development of the Darwendale platinum group metals deposit.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the African Export-Import Bank and the Russian-Zimbabwean Great Dyke Investments on provision of project financing by this bank to the tune of US$192 million.
Great Dyke Investments also signed another MoU with the African Financial Corporation on shareholding participation in the Darwendale project with an amount of up to US$75 million. The Darwendale deposit is the second largest in the world. It comprises reserves of platinum, palladium, rhodium, gold, nickel and copper.
Zimbabwe, a landlocked country in southern Africa, shares a 200-kilometre border on the south with South Africa, bounded on the southwest and west by Botswana, on the north by Zambia and on the northeast and east by Mozambique.
It is a member of Southern African Development Community (SADC).
GNA
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