Russian President Vladimir Putin says Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on May 6.
Speaking at the Kremlin on April 20, Putin said he expects Abe's working visit to "facilitate the widening of Russian-Japanese ties on the basis of mutual advantage and taking each other's interests into account."
"The development of multifaceted dialogue with Japan is one of our foreign policy priorities," he added.
The planned meeting in Sochi comes ahead of a summit of the Group of Seven economic powers in Japan in late May.
A long-running dispute over the Kurile Islands, which Russia seized from Japan at the end of World War II, has strained ties and has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty.
