ABSTRACT
For Malta, an island state in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, geography seems to imply that the government would only have a regional foreign policy focus, whereas a country like Russia extends outside its immediate points of reference and domains of interest. Relations between the two countries, however, have ‘grown from strength to strength in the areas of political and diplomatic interaction, trade and economic cooperation, cultural ties, and people-to-people contacts’, confirmed the Ambassador to the Russian Fed-eration confirmed at an exhibition at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Val-letta during a week-long celebration of the Russian-Maltese friendship in October 2010. There is a ‘bilateral agenda,’ explained the Ambassador, where the ‘most promising areas of cooperation’ are ‘trade and economic ties’, on the basis of a ‘solid foundation of traditional friendship and mutual respect between the Russian and Maltese people’ that has ‘deep historical roots’ (The Malta Independent, 31 July 2011).
