Moscow, May 31 (Prensa Latina) Russian President Vladimir Putin begins on Thursday his first international tour in
Belarus, Germany, France, Uzbekistan, China and Kazakhstan, to discuss strategic ties, trade and the situation in Afghanistan, said the Kremlin. The first stop will be in Minsk, for a two-day official visit, where he will analize with his Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, the advancement of the unified state and the Common Economic Space (CES), brought into force with Kazakhstan in January this year.
Then he will travel to Berlin, on June 1, to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to discuss economic relations with the major trade partners of Moscow and the buyer number one of Russian gas.
On the same day, Putin will travel to Paris, to develop relationships with the new French President Francois Hollande, in another key country in the European Union (EU), which represents 53 percent of national foreign trade.
Accordign to Yuri Ushakov, Russian presidential assistant, the head of state will come back to Moscow on Saturday and he will attend on June 3 and 4 the Russia-EU summit in St. Petersburg. The next day he will make an official visit to Tashkent.
In his meeting with the Uzbek president Islam Karimov, the russian statements will address the situation in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2014, according to Tatiana Parjanova, from the Center of European Security.
With a Gross Domestic Product in 2011 of more than 2 trillion USD, Russia maintains a trade with Uzbekistan of over two billion dollars USD.