Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry received a phone call on Friday from his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in which they discussed preparations for the Egyptian-Russian summit scheduled to be held in late May.
The call came as part of both sides’ follow-up for their scheduled summit, which will also be attended by both countries’ defence ministers.
During Friday’s phone call, talks between Shoukry and Lavrov did not only include discussions over the summit, but also about their efforts of the political settlement in Syria, and they reviewed the results of the Astana meetings as well.
Both sides agreed on the importance of advancing the political negotiations in Geneva and stressed on the centrality of a political solution for the Syrian crisis.
In a previous phone call in April, Shoukry and Lavrov discussed several issues related to the bilateral relations between the two countries and means of enhancing them. The two ministers also discussed the situation in Syria and Libya and a number of issues on the agenda of the UN Security Council that concern the two countries.
Egypt and Russia hold the same point of view on several regional and international issues, such as the Syrian crisis; however, Russia has stopped flights from Moscow to Egypt after the crash of a Russian plane in Sinai in October 2016. There have been several narrations made by the Russian side about the resurrection of their flights to Egypt, but nothing official yet.
