According to the Kremlin, the Russian President is set to meet with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko at Putin's Black Sea residence in Sochi for talks on closer economic ties.
The meeting comes as Belarus seeks assistance amid a bruising showdown with the European Union over the diversion of a flight to arrest a dissident journalist.
Belarus provoked the EU's outrage when Belarusian flight controllers on Sunday told the crew of a Ryanair jet flying from Greece to Lithuania there was a bomb threat and instructed it to land in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, where 26-year-old journalist Raman Pratasevich was arrested along with his Russian girlfriend.
The EU responded by barring Belarusian carriers from its airspace and airports and advising European airlines to skirt Belarus. The bloc's foreign ministers agreed Thursday to ramp up sanctions to target the country’s lucrative potash industry and other sectors of the Belarusian economy that are the main cash-earners for Lukashenko's government.
