LONDON, June 26 (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin will visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, two states that belonged to the Soviet Union, this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday.
Pavel Zarubin, Kremlin correspondent for the public television channel Rossiya 1, said the Russian president would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, before receiving Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Moscow.
Dushanb, the capital of Tajikistan, the Russian leader will meet his counterpart Imomali Rakhmon, a close ally of Russia and the oldest leader of a former Soviet state.
Vladimir Putin will then attend Ashgabat at the Caspian nations summit, which will be attended by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan, Pavel Zaroubin said.
The Russian president also plans to travel to the Belarusian city of Grodno on June 30 and July 1 to attend a forum with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, told Belarusian television on Sunday. Putin’s last known trip outside of Russia was in Beijing in early February, where he struck up a “boundless” friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping hours before they were both to attend the inauguration ceremony. opening of the Winter Olympics. (Report Guy Faulconbridge and David Ljunggren, French version Nicolas Delame and Benjamin Mallet)