MOSCOW, November 30. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin will on Friday embark on a two-day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to take part in a G20 summit and hold a series of bilateral meetings.
According to presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, the Russian leader’s schedule will be extremely intense for the next two days with "almost every minute mapped out." The Kremlin official named five major elements of Putin's visit to Argentina - the G20 summit, the BRICS meeting, informal Russia-India-China talks, bilateral meetings and Russian-Argentine events as part of Putin’s official visit.
Bilateral meetings
The Russian president’s visit to Argentina will last about 40 hours in total, during which he is scheduled to hold eight bilateral meetings, including with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Earlier, US President Donald Trump unilaterally cancelled his meeting with Putin over the Kerch Strait incident, in which Russia had to detain three Ukrainian warships that violated its national border.
Apart from those previously agreed meetings, Putin may have brief informal contacts with other leaders whom he would meet during the summit’s official events.
G20 summit
This year, the G20 summit will for the first time ever be hosted by a South American nation. Apart from Putin, the event will be attended by leaders of the remaining 19 nations and the leadership of the European Union. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will be the special guest. Special invitations were also sent to heads of The Netherlands, Chile, Singapore, Senegal, Rwanda and Jamaica. Traditionally, the summit will be attended by heads of major international bodies - the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
When Argentina assumed the rotating G20 presidency last December, President Mauricio Macri identified the following topics as priorities: creating jobs in the future, infrastructure for development and sustainable future in the agricultural sphere. However, Argentine G20 sherpa Pedro Villagra Delgado said "the most difficult" issues to agree upon will be the climate change, steel tariffs and migration.
The event’s official program will begin with the Leaders’ Retreat - an informal discussion of the G20 leaders plus the special guest (Spain) behind closed doors. Representatives of other nations and international organizations, as well as accompanying officials, will not take part in the meeting.
The aim of those talks is to build a dialogue on matters of global development for the upcoming decade. The leaders will discuss the potential influence of advanced technologies on the global economy, possible negative and positive effects of the digital economy and the "fourth industrial revolution."
After the closed-door talks, the participants will hold three plenary sessions under the slogan "A fair and sustainable future."
The summit’s first session, in the format of a working breakfast, will be headlined "Putting people first" and is expected to focus on the current economic situation, measures to spur growth and making economic development a more inclusive and fair process. The participants are expected to discuss, among other things, labor market regulations and unemployment.
The second working meeting will be held under the slogan of "Building consensus" and will be split into two parts.
The summit's agenda will continue on Saturday, December 1, with plenary sessions starting at 10.00 am local time, followed by a working lunch entitled "Embracing opportunities." The discussion will focus on the development of infrastructure, energy and food security.
Russian G20 Sherpa Svetlana Lukash said Moscow’s participation in the summit will focus on two key issues - the development of the digital economy and the situation in the international trade. She added that the leaders are likely to lay down their key decisions, which "have political importance and strategic nature," in the final declaration.
"There will be the [final] declaration, I guarantee," Lukash said. "We expect the final document to be adopted, certainly. The matter is only how ambitions it would be.".