Prague/Moscow, Aug 31 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman will have a meeting with Russian head of state Vladimir Putin during his forthcoming visit to China, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek told CTK, confirming the information moved by the Russian news agency TASS yesterday.
He said Zeman’s meeting with Putin on Thursday, September 3, will start at 14:30 Beijing time (8:30 CEST) and it is to last around 45 minutes and focus on security and economic topics.
Ovcacek said meetings with Zeman’s Chinese counterpart and other politicians are also planned.
Hynek Kmonicek, head of the foreign affairs section of Zeman’s office, told public Czech Television (CT) tonight that Zeman is likely to talk about Ukraine, Syria and the Middle East with Putin.
Kmonicek said Zeman will also speak of the fight against Islamic terrorism.
“Russia perceives some dangers more acutely than it can be seen for example on the other side of the Atlantic,” he said, adding that Russia has far more Muslims among its population than the United States.
Kmonicek said Putin’s support is necessary for the operation preventing refugees from entering the EU external border to be successful.
Without Putin’s help, the position of Russian diplomacy in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will not change, he said. Without the UNSC’s mandate, access to Libyan territorial waters, from where migrants start sailing to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea, will not be possible, Kmonicek added.
Putin’s meeting was announced to TASS by his foreign political adviser Yuri Ushakov yesterday. He said it will take place on Thursday when Putin is also to meet Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Laos’s supreme representative Choummaly Sayason.
Ushakov said the Czech-Russian summit will be held on the margin of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in which both statesmen will participate.
The talks are to be held after a military parade and a reception that Chinese President Xi Jinping will host for foreign participants on Thursday.
Zeman met Putin the last time in Moscow where he attended the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe in May.
They focused on economic cooperation with emphasis on Czech claims in Russia.
Zeman kept his promise and he did not attend a military parade in the Red Square that was seen as a show of Russia’s military strength against the background of the Ukrainian conflict. Zeman’s Moscow visit split Czech politicians.
Last February, Zeman attended a reception hosted by Putin on the occasion of the opening of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
They also met in Moscow in April 2002 when Zeman was the Czech prime minister.
