The Prime Minister said the two countries will create working groups to restore energy cooperation. Among other projects on the table is the Belene nuclear power plant, suspended in 2009.

Brussels opposed the South Stream pipeline, claiming the project violated the European Union's Third Energy Package. The ruling stipulates that the same company, in this case Russia's Gazprom, is forbidden to both provide and transport gas. The pipeline was intended to transport gas from Russia under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, then to Serbia and Western Europe.

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow is still interested in the project, but Gazprom could not proceed due to EU roadblocks.

“How could we spend €9 billion just to have all this metal sink into the sea, without having secured the right to enter Bulgarian territory? But of course, as soon as we realized what was happening, we shut down any further work. We did not abandon the project, we were stopped from implementing it,” said Putin.

After Gazprom cancelled South Stream in December 2014, the company planned to reroute the pipeline through Turkey. The Turkish Stream project was also shelved late last year due to the conflict between Moscow and Ankara after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in Syria. However, with the thaw in relations between the countries, the project may be given another life.

The renewed activity from Bulgaria is linked to €550 million in compensation to Russia for the cancelled Belene nuclear power plant.

In 2006, Bulgaria contracted Russia's Rosatom to build two 1,000 megawatt reactors at Belene on the Danube River. The project was abandoned after failing to attract €10 billion in investments.

"The arbitration ruling in its essence says that [Bulgarian state energy firm] NEK and Atomstroyexport should sit together and decide whether they will build that reactor, whether they will sell it and be done with it," said PM Borisov after the court decision.

OT was represented at the meeting by Director of Board G.Batsukh and former CEO Andrew Woodley, as well as the Country Director for Mongolia of Rio Tinto S.Munkhsukh and others.

They stated that the company keeps safety and national procurement principles as priorities, and informed that 93 percent of staff are Mongolian citizens, as of the end of the second quarter of 2016. The company prefers to cooperate with Mongolian suppliers, owned by Mongolians for at least 51 percent.

To the Minister’s question on the production performance, the OT leaders stated that copper production is likely to reach 204 thousand tons, slightly lower that the estimation of 208 thousand tons, by the end of this year, while the gold production is expected to go up due to the possibility to extract high grade ores from the second phase of ground mine.

Present were also, the Vice Minister Kh.Badamsuren, A.Undraa MP and the heads of departments and divisions of the Ministry.

IKEA, which is currently based in Khimki, northern Moscow, has been involved in a number of long-term legal battles with the Russian government and local business.

A spokesperson for the company said that the searches were an attempt to blackmail the retail behemoth.

“The searches are taking place in relation to the legal dispute over the land. They’re searching for documents from 1993 over land rights. We are providing what is being asked for,” Semyon Shevchenko, a lawyer for IKEA Russia, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“IKEA has been in Russia for over 20 years and is one of the largest investors in Russia’s economy. We do not plan to give into blackmail, even under such pressure,” he said.

Officers from Moscow region’s economic crimes unit searched IKEA’s offices in April after the regional branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry initiated a criminal case against the retailer on charges of fraud.

The Khimki Collective Agricultural Enterprise (KSPhP) took IKEA to court in 2012, claiming that IKEA had the obtained the offices from them fraudulently during the previous year.