SOCHI, May 29. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko are continuing talks on Saturday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where Lukashenko arrived on Friday, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS.
"Today the talks between the two presidents are ongoing," Peskov said.
On Friday, Putin and Lukashenko held talks at the Russian president’s Bocharov Ruchei residence in Sochi. At the talks, Putin, in particular, invited his counterpart to have a swim in the sea, noting that the water was getting warmer and warmer. In his reply, Lukashenko thanked Putin for the invitation to come on Friday, "so that, indeed, [I] could take a dip in the sea at the weekend."
The Kremlin press service reported earlier that at the May 28 talks the Russian and Belarusian presidents had planned to focus on the development of bilateral ties in the future and on the two countries’ projects in the trade, economic, energy, cultural and humanitarian fields along with on further integration within the Union State of Russia and Belarus.
At the beginning of the meeting Putin pointed out that it had been scheduled before another spiral of events around Belarus and touched upon economic cooperation between the two countries as the first issue. For his part, Lukashenko told Putin before the closed-door part of the summit meeting on Friday that he had brought "some documents" on the current developments around Belarus. According to Lukashenko, "an attempt is underway to sway the situation to the level of August last year."
Ahead of the talks, the Russian president’s spokesman noted that Lukashenko would have an opportunity to inform Putin in detail about the circumstances and reasons behind the incident with the Ryanair jetliner, which made an emergency landing in Minsk after a bomb had been reported aboard the flight.