ATHENS, January 30. /TASS/. Greece is enthusiastic about Russia’s decision to resume bilateral international air service starting February 8, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Russian reporters late on Friday in Athens following the political consultations at the Greek foreign ministry.

"The Greek side is very enthusiastic about the decision taken by the Russian government to resume air service with Greece starting February 8," he said. "It is an open secret that the Greek tourist sector has been hit hard. The total number of Russian tourists visiting Greece used to reach 750,000, even 1.3 mln at some point. Last year 25,000 [tourists] visited Greece. The relationship between our countries also relies on this element of contacts between people, of course. We intend to increase focus on development of tourism, the more so because a year of tourism between Russia and Greece was successfully held not long ago, two years ago," Deputy Minister noted.

The trip to Athens has been made with the aim of meeting the plan of consultations between foreign ministries that has been adopted recently, and in accordance with the agreements reached during Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Greece on October 26, 2020, Grushko said. "The political consultations provided a very good chance of analyzing the state of the Russian-Greek relations, discussing the schedule of the political dialogue, particularly within the framework of preparing high-level contacts, estimating implementation of agreements reached earlier, including preparations for a year of history between Russia and Greece," the diplomat said.

Grushko also discussed the state of economic relations with the Greek side during the visit. "We focused on the fields, in which substantial progress is possible. Overall, it is surely the energy sector, cooperation in agriculture, the whole range of fields related to high technologies, transport, communications and some more. There is awareness that it is necessary to convene an intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation and launch working groups as soon as possible to propel economic cooperation. We assume that if those instruments function well we will manage to make meaningful headway towards deepening of economic cooperation based on the ties that have been developed over the past years," Deputy Minister said, adding that Russia is also one of Greece’s key partners in the gas sector.