Putin to meet with world leaders, media chiefs, investors on first day of SPIEF

As part of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russian President Vladimir Putin will traditionally meet with state leaders, heads of major news agencies and investors on Thursday.

On the sidelines of the forum, Putin is scheduled to meet with heads of foreign delegations - Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Besides, the Russian leader will continue his dialogue with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he met in Moscow on Wednesday.

All those foreign leaders, as well as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, will jointly participate in the forum’s centerpiece event - the plenary session - due on June 7.

Dialogue with global media and investors
The first event on the president’s Thursday schedule will be a meeting with heads of global news agencies, organized by TASS for the sixth time. This year, high representatives of ten agencies from nine countries (the UK, Germany, Iran, Spain, Italy, China, the US, France and Japan) will attend the meeting with Putin. TASS Director General Sergei Mikhailov will represent Russia at the event.

"As always, the meeting will be held in the question-and-anwer format and will be devoted mostly to relevant issues of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.

Another traditional event to be held as part of SPIEF is Putin’s working lunch with members of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the global investment community. The meeting will attended by representatives of investment funds from about 20 countries, including Germany, France, Japan, China, South Korea, India, Italy, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

"In total, over 40 international investors, who together manage the capital of over $15.2 trillion, [have been invited]," he said.

As a rule, Putin makes a speech and the event continues behind closed doors. The discussion will be moderated by RDIF Chief Executive Kirill Dmitriev.

Meetings with state leaders
As part of the forum, Putin will hold bilateral talks with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) later in the week, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists on Tuesday.

"The Russian president will meet separately on June 6 with the president of the Republic of Bulgaria, the Slovak prime minister and the prime minister of Armenia," Ushakov said. On June 7, Putin will meet with the UN secretary general and Prime Minister of Saxony (German federal state) Michael Kretschmer, he added.

"Besides, he will have a host of bilateral contacts on the sidelines of the forum - some of them are scheduled, while others are not even envisaged by any program. In other words, our president will communicate actively, including informally, with participants in the forum," the Kremlin aide said.

Putin will continue contacts with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom he will have full-fledged talks in Moscow a day earlier, on June 5. "After the ceremony to hand over the honorary doctor’s degree of St. Petersburg University to the Chinese president, our leader will have another informal conversation with Xi Jinping late on June 6. It will be an informal dinner one-on-one in which only interpreters will participate," he added.

The Russian and Chinese leaders will continue an exchange of opinions on the issues discussed at the talks, and they may also touch upon any other issues, Ushakov said.

SPIEF-2019, dubbed "Creating a Sustainable Development Agenda," will take place on June 6-8. TASS is the general information partner and the official photohost agency of the event, organized by the Roscongress foundation.