Russian President Vladimir Putin is arriving in Dushanbe today. He will hold talks with his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon here to discuss bilateral cooperation. Some media reports say Putin makes short stopover in Dushanbe on his trip to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, where he will attend a summit of Caspian nations including the leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan.
The Kremlin says Vladimir Putin will pay a working visit to the Republic of Tajikistan at the invitation of President Emomali Rahmon. During the high-level talks in Dushanbe, the presidents plan to consider the current agenda of Russian-Tajik relations of strategic partnership and alliance and their further development in various areas. They will also exchange views on regional issues, including the situation in Afghanistan, according to the Kremlin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on June 27 that the talks will be held in a face-to-face format. He did not elaborate.
TASS says the beginning of the talks will be open for media. Later on, the leaders will continue conversation at a working lunch in an informal setting “without ties.”
Pavel Zarubin, the Kremlin correspondent of the Rossiya 1 state television station, said Putin would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks in Moscow.
Russian president’s visit to Dushanbe will take place three days after he met with Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko in Moscow, during which he told Lukashenko that Russia will supply Belarus with an Iskander-M mobile missile system with a range of up to 500 kilometers.
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
Russia has its military base in Tajikistan, which is subordinate to the Central Military District. It is Russia's largest non-naval military facility outside the country.
It was officially opened in Tajikistan in 2004 under a previous agreement, which was signed in 1993, and hosts Russia’s largest military contingent deployed abroad.
A total of some 7,000 Russian troops are now stationed at two military facilities collectively known as the 201st military base – in Dushanbe and Bokhtar (formerly Qurghon Teppa), some 100 kilometers from Dushanbe.
It is to be noted that Putin’s visit to the Tajik capital will be his first known trip abroad since ordering to launch the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24.
Putin last week highlighted the need for the BRICS nations to work jointly to build a multipolar. In his address to the 14th BRICS summit via video link, Putin also pointed out that the five countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—can effectively work together to ensure international stability and security, sustainable growth and prosperity and the well-being of their people. The Russian president said that the West's selfish attempts to blame the entire world for its own mistakes in macroeconomics led to a crisis which can be surmounted only with honest and mutually beneficial cooperation.
