MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. Russia assumes that friendly Serbia will perform its obligations in respect of NIS company, President Vladimir Putin said during the combined Direct Line Q&A session and year-end press conference headlined "Results of the Year."

"We have the intergovernmental agreement with Serbia concerning adoption of any restrictions whatsoever in respect of this commercial organization. We certainly assume that the leaders of Serbia that are friendly to us will take it into account and will perform obligations they undertook. Otherwise the question arises, ‘How to invest funds in the economy of the country? Where are the security guarantees if even intergovernmental agreements do not work?" Putin said.

"This is a challenging task. Regrettably, despite the external aspiration to establish relations, sanction pressure unconditionally continues. This pertains to our company Gazprom Neft, which is the owner of NIS, to which Gazprom Neft invested a fair amount of funds, already more than $3 bln, and turned into a modern and very efficiently working undertaking," he added.