MOSCOW, December 21. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold bilateral meetings today with Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko later today, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced.
"(The EAEU summit - TASS) will be preceded by two separate bilateral meetings of the President. These are a meeting with Kyrgyz President Japarov and a meeting with Belarusian President Lukashenko," Peskov told reporters.
After that, there will be meetings in narrow and expanded formats, and later the leaders of the association will continue to communicate informally.
"And tomorrow, as part of the CIS, there will also be communication," the Kremlin official added. He noted that summits of the leaders of the EAEU and CIS countries traditionally take place every year, and they all arrive for two days. Despite their informal nature, all meetings are substantive.
"An EAEU summit has an agenda, documents, and serious condemnations," he noted.
On December 21-22, Putin is working in St. Petersburg. The northern capital will host the now-traditional informal meeting of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council.
All CIS leaders will gather on Monday, December 22. The informal pre-New Year's meeting is a long-standing tradition of the Commonwealth. Putin has been holding such pre-holiday summits since at least 2017.