At a meeting with his Moldovan counterpart in Moscow, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said that President Vladimir Voronin significantly contributed to the consolidation of unity of the Russian and Moldovan peoples. According to Putin, this fact constitutes the basis needed to develop the relations between the two countries, Info-Prim Neo reports with reference to the Moldovan presidential press service. According to the cited source, Vladimir Putin congratulated Vladimir Voronin on receiving the prize “For Remarkable Effort in Strengthening Unity of Orthodox Peoples”, awarded by the International Fund of Unity of Orthodox Peoples. The Russian president said that the meeting with Vladimir Voronin was a good occasion to discuss the entire range of issues related to the bilateral relations between Russia and Moldova. Vladimir Voronin pointed to the positive trends in the bilateral relations between Moldova and Russian in the past two years. “Each year, we move to a new stage of the integration and strategic partnership between our states, in compliance with the agreements that we reached in 2006 in Minsk and then in 2007 in Dushanbe,” Vladimir Voronin said, quoted by the presidential press service.