Speaking to Prensa Latina, the official said that there is great potential for local cooperation with Cuba, as relations between Russia and Cuba have a good tradition and date back to the Soviet Union.

That relationship has not only been time-tested, but is also latent in the traditions of friendship between the two peoples.

Kujaruk pointed out that the areas of collaboration include education, public health, mining, development of scientific activity in biomedicine, transportation, oil derivatives and sports, not to mention cutting-edge technologies.

The governor said that the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region can also cooperate with Cuba in educational information technology platforms, as it plans to do with other states such as Vietnam and Iran.

The two countries can cooperate to develop medical information technology platforms to help treat diseases, or use artificial intelligence to help relevant agencies detect deforestation activities or forest fires at an early stage, the politician said.

According to the acting governor, another area of cooperation may be tourism, because Cuba has been a traditional and popular destination for Russian tourists for many years.

The Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Oblast is the main oil-producing area of the Russian Federation and one of the largest crude oil producing regions in the world, with production accounting for about five percent of the total world production of hydrocarbon (216.1 million tons).

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