Updated 11:12 p.m. Moscow Time
MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko is being prepared and could be held in Milan on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe summit (ASEM), the Kremlin said Thursday.
"The meeting is in the works," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Peskov added that the meeting could be held either in a bilateral format or in a multilateral format with participation of other heads of state.
Earlier in the day, the press service of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko informed that President Poroshenko told his Belorusian counterpart by telephone that the meeting was in the works.
"According to Poroshenko, in the course of it [the meeting] a whole range of issues of the Ukrainian-Russian agenda will be discussed, including the cessation of the armed conflict in the south-east of Ukraine," the press service informed.
The last meeting between the presidents took place in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on August 26 at talks that also involved heads of Russia’s Customs Union partner states Belarus and Kazakhstan, along with EU officials.
The two leaders discussed the crisis in Ukraine, humanitarian aid to the country’s eastern regions, the flow of refugees to Russia and the possibility of an internal dialogue between Kiev and eastern Ukraine.
ASEM is an informal trans-regional platform for dialogue and cooperation between the two regions. The 10th ASEM summit will take place in Milan on October 16-17.
