A senior Russian official also confirmed at the start of a one-day summit with the EU that Moscow wanted to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on its own but would co-ordinate its entry with Belarus and Kazakhstan, its partner in a customs union.

The summit is intended to lay the foundations for a new economic and political partnership between the 27-country EU and Russia.

“We have talked about the most important issues…most importantly we discussed the climate change issue,” said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after a bilateral Swedish-Russian meeting before the summit.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said that Russia and Sweden, which holds the EU presidency until the end of this year, both had a lower level of harmful emissions than 20 years ago but “have the potential to do more”.

The EU is also concerned about the reliability of energy supplies from Russia and was expected to make this clear during the EU-Russia summit.

The EU and Russia signed a memorandum on November 16 requiring both sides to notify the other of any likely disruption to energy supplies and to work together to resolve any problems.