The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand will host the 7th Session of the Joint Thai – Russian Commission on Bilateral Cooperation on 27 December 2018 in Bangkok. The Thai and Russian co-chairs of the meeting are, respectively, H.E. Mr. Don Pramudwinai, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand, and H.E. Mr. Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. 

 

The Joint Thai – Russian Commission on Bilateral Cooperation was established in 1993. The 6th session of the Joint Commission was held on 15 July 2015 in Moscow, the Russian Federation. The 7th session of the Joint Commission, to be hosted by Thailand, will be attended by representatives from more than 60 agencies that are involved in various areas of Thai – Russian cooperation. The meeting will review various fields of cooperation during the past 3 years and exchange views on how to further promote and develop cooperation in areas of mutual interest, such as political, security, economic, science and technology, agricultural, educational and cultural issues. 

 

Since the 6th session of the Joint Commission, Thai – Russian relations have been very dynamic with concrete cooperation in several fields. For example, activities were conducted to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, as well as several exchanges of high-level visits and meetings between both countries’ leaders and ministers, and several sub-commissions and joint working groups were held on a regular basis such as those on economic cooperation and trade, agriculture, banking, energy, tourism, environment and security.

 

In 2017, bilateral trade between the Kingdom of Thailand and the Russian Federation reached 3.023 billion USD, an increase of 55.68 percent, while the number of Russian tourists visiting Thailand that year was more than 1.4 billion, an increase of 26 percent from 2016.