Putin To Make First Foreign Trips Since Launching Ukraine Operation

By Staff, Agencies

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday, in what would be his first known trip abroad since ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

Pavel Zarubin, the Kremlin correspondent of the Rossiya 1 state television station, said Putin would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks in Moscow.

In Dushanbe, Putin will meet Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon, a close Russian ally and the longest-serving ruler of a former Soviet state. In Ashgabat, he will attend a summit of Caspian nations including the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan, Zarubin said.

Putin also plans to visit the Belarus city of Grodno on June 30 and July 1 to take part in a forum with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, RIA news agency cited Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia's upper chamber of parliament, as telling Belarus television on Sunday.

Putin's last known trip outside Russia was a visit to Beijing in early February, where he and Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled a "no limits" friendship treaty hours before both attended the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games.

Russia started its special military operation in Ukraine in late February, following the latter's failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.