MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The dates that Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande are to be in Armenia coincide so the two leaders may meet during the event of the anniversary of Armenian genocide in Yerevan, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday.
“As far as I understand, Putin and Hollande’s arrivals in Yerevan coincide. They will both be there at the same time so a meeting between them can’t be excluded on the sidelines of the program that is planned by the Armenian side,” Peskov told journalists.
The last time Putin and Hollande met was during the Normandy Format talks on Ukraine reconciliation in February in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
On April 24, Armenia will host commemorations of the 100th year since the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire. Armenia invited high-level delegations from around the world to pay tribute to the victims of the massacre.
Yerevan estimates that approximately 1.5 million Armenians were killed under Ottoman rule during World War I. Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, refuses to accept any form of responsibility or define the event as a genocide.
