Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko when he travels to Milan next week, a high-level diplomatic source said Thursday.
Putin is among the leaders expected to attend the Europe-Asia Meeting (ASEM) that Italy – the current holder of the EU rotating presidency – is due to host in its industrial capital on October 16-17.
The source told dpa that the format of the Putin-Poroshenko meeting is still unclear, but that other EU leaders would be expected to take part.
“A meeting in the Normandy format – Putin, [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, [French President Francois] Hollande and Poroshenko – is not ruled out,” Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told the Tass news agency.
Such a meeting would mark the third time the Russian and Ukrainian presidents meet face-to-face since fighting broke out in eastern Ukraine.
The duo was joined by the presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan and senior officials from the European Union in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in August to discuss the crisis.
The diplomatic source also said Putin is planning to visit former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi at his villa near Milan.
Berlusconi, a personal friend of Putin, cannot leave his house after 11 pm following a tax fraud conviction which was converted to one year of community service due to several amnesty laws.
GNA
