China supports Russia's efforts to tackle illegal logging

As emphasized in the Chinese Foreign Ministry, cooperation in the forest industry is an important component of practical cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.

“But at the same time, there is a problem of illegal deforestation in the development of Russia's forest industry,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The agency also expressed its readiness to solve this problem together with the Russian side.

Earlier, the Minister of Natural Resources, Dmitry Kobylkin, said that Russia could ban timber exports to China in the absence of Beijing's assistance in solving the problem of illegal logging.

Chairman of the Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection, coordinator of the federal project "Clean Country" Vladimir Burmatov in an interview with the FAN commented on Kobylkin's statement.