Putin urges Russian-Ukrainian economic cooperation

CHISINAU — Russia and Ukraine should coordinate efforts in facing the global economic turmoil, given that enterprises in the two former Soviet republics were still economically linked, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday.

Cooperation between Kiev and Moscow was needed now "more than ever," Putin said in Moldova, where he was attending a meeting of premiers from former Soviet Union republics, known as the Commonwealth of Independent States.

He was also holding separate bilateral talks Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on energy issues, among other topics. Ukraine maintains factories in mining and heavy industry that had been controlled by Moscow during the Soviet era.

"We are living in fairly complicated conditions connected to the global world crisis," Putin before the talks with Tymoshenko. "Many of our enterprises are directly connected, and there is a high level of cooperation."

Tymoshenko urged the other prime ministers in Moldova to seek common solutions to overcoming the economic crisis.

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