On 17 July, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Italian Republic in the Russian Federation Pasquale Terracciano paid his first official visit to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. The Ambassador was accompanied by the First Counselor of the Department of the promotion of Italian culture, science and language and coordination of the consular network Walter Ferrara and Scientific Attaché Aldo Spallone. Moreover, leaders of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, namely INFN President Fernando Ferroni and INFN Vice-President Antonio Masiero, also arrived at Dubna. Pasquale Terracciano was appointed as official representative of the Italian Republic in the Russian Federation at the beginning of 2018. The main goal of the Ambassador’s visit to Dubna was acquaintance with JINR and its fields of scientific activities, which is realized with a very strong connection with Italy. That’s a historical connection due to Bruno Pontecorvo and the inspirational work that he conducted in this research centre, but there’s also a very long tradition of cooperation in scientific fields, in particular in physics. In fact, an important agreement was signed in 1996 between the Italian research institutions and the Dubna centre. And last year, during the visit of President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella, a more ambitious agreement was signed in the Italian Embassy in Moscow. INFN has been cooperating with JINR for many years, by doing experiments together, hosting JINR researchers in Turin, and then people from Turin used to go to Dubna. Moreover, INFN and JINR researchers have been working together in CERN, in Geneva, for a long time. The cooperation is now particularly significant as JINR is at the phase of intense development with the ambitious scientific project of the accelerator NICA (Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility). As an example, among other outputs of this proficient collaboration, the heart of the MPD (Multi Purpose Detector) experiment at NICA is made in Italy, in Genoa, with the contribution of INFN