Putin to meet 'old friend' Henry Kissinger

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will meet Friday with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to discuss world affairs, including elections in Russia and the United States, said Putin's press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov. Mr. Peskov said Mr. Kissinger requested the meeting in late November or early December 2011. The two men are “old friends” who have met eight or 10 times over the years, once dining at Mr. Kissinger's home in New York, he said. He said Mr. Putin was interested in Kissinger's counsel about domestic politics, among other subjects. “He values everyone's point of view, and especially such a wise man as Henry Kissinger.” The meeting comes six weeks before Russia's presidential election and amid accusations that the United States was behind a series of street protests that began after the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections that were widely dismissed as fraudulent.

On Tuesday, a report on state-controlled television accused the new U.S. ambassador, Michael A. McFaul, of working to provoke revolution. On Thursday, Mr. Kissinger met with McFaul, the ambassador wrote on his blog. The former Secretary of State, he added, “is back in Moscow to continue the kind of strategic dialogue with the Russian government that is so important to our partnership.”

Mr. Putin has cited Kissinger as a trusted foreign policy adviser. In the book

First Person , he admiringly recalled a conversation in the early 1990s. Mr. Kissinger made a strong impression by saying that he, too, had gotten his start in intelligence, and that he felt Mikhail Gorbachev had been too hasty in withdrawing Soviet forces from Eastern Europe.

— New York Times News Service