Pakistan PM to visit Moscow next week for 1st time in 2 decades
This is the first time a Pakistani prime minister visits Russia since 1999.
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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan will be visiting Moscow this week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the first visit of its kind by a Pakistani leader in two decades.
In a statement reported by Reuters, the Pakistani foreign office said that "during the summit meeting, the two leaders will review the entire array of bilateral relations including energy cooperation."
The office added that Khan and Putin will also tackle issues like the situation in Afghanistan. According to Reuters, the visit was planned before the current crisis in Ukraine.
In an interview published on Monday, Khan minimized the importance of the visit's timing and any effect it would have on Pakistan's relations with the West.
"This visit was planned well before the emergence of the current phase of Ukrainian crisis ... I received the invitation from President Putin much earlier," he told Newsweek Pakistan.
It is worth noting that relations between Russia and Pakistan deteriorated in the past as a result of Islamabad's bias toward to the United States during the Cold War.
As relations started to deteriorate between the United States and Pakistan in recent years, a rapprochement was witnessed between Moscow and Islamabad, particularly in bilateral projects in the gas and energy fields.
