HAVANA, July 21. /TASS/. A plane carrying Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, landed at Cuba’s Jose Marti International Airport, a TASS correspondent reported.
According to the State Duma’s press service, the speaker is scheduled to meet with President of the Cuban National Assembly of People's Power (parliament) Esteban Lazo.
The Russian delegation includes First Deputy Speaker Ivan Melnikov, deputy speakers Alexander Babakov, Vladislav Davankov and Boris Chernyshov, and head of the Liberal Democratic Party faction, chief of the Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky.
Other Duma committee chairmen are also present: Pavel Zavalny on energy, Andrey Kartapolov on defense, Vasily Piskarev on security and anti-corruption, and Alexander Khinshtein on information policy, information technologies and communications.
Volodin arrived in Cuba from Nicaragua, where he represented Russia at the ceremonial events dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Sandinista People's Revolution held on July 19 in Managua. He also met with the country’s President Daniel Ortega to hand him over a message from the Russian leader.