Cuban President receives Russian parliamentary leader

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel received at the Palace of the Revolution, the seat of the Cuban Government, the head of the State Duma (Lower House) of the Russian Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, who arrived this Saturday in Havana on an official visit.

“It is a pleasure and an honor to receive him in our country,” said Diaz-Canel, who also stressed “the enormous significance” of the visit “because it gives continuity to all the exchanges we have had in recent months,” the Cuban presidency reported on the social network Twitter.

Volodin, for his part, thanked for the welcome received in Cuba and conveyed to the Cuban leader “greetings and good wishes sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin”, according to the same source.

The Russian deputy affirmed that his delegation would do everything possible to implement the decisions approved between the two countries.

Later, Volodin and the president of the National Assembly of People’s Power (unicameral Parliament) of Cuba, Esteban Lazo, headed the Interparliamentary Cooperation Commission, born of an agreement signed in Moscow last November “to continue strengthening ties between the two nations in areas of mutual interest”.

The two countries’ parliamentary leaders held a round of official talks at the National Capitol, the administrative headquarters of the National Assembly of People’s Power.

Volodin, who visited Cuba in February last year, also laid a wreath at the monument to Cuban national hero Jose Marti in Havana’s colonial zone in front of the Museum of the Revolution.

Just ten days ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Havana, concluding a Latin American tour that took him to Brazil, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in that order.

Last March, Havana received the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, and the executive director of the Rosneft oil company, Igor Sechin.

In January, the president of the Cuba-Russia Business Council, Boris Titov, visited the island.