Cuban President Raul Castro was to meet his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev Thursday in a bid to revive Soviet-era ties as he paid the first visit to Moscow by a Cuban leader since the Cold War.
He was to hold informal talks with Medvedev at the Zavidovo hunting lodge near Moscow, the same place where Soviet leaders once entertained their closest foreign allies, in a rare honor for a visiting dignitary in modern Russia.
Castro, who took over as president from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006, said his visit would expand relations with Russia, healing a rift that emerged with the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of Soviet subsidies to Havana.
"We, like many others, see Russia's rebirth as a positive factor," Castro, 77, told the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.
"Relations between Russia and Cuba are excellent and this visit to Moscow will serve to strengthen ties between our countries.
Raul Castro, who was flown to Moscow Wednesday on a Russian presidential jet, made several Soviet-era visits to Moscow between 1960 and 1984 as well as a visit he made to Communist-ruled Romania in 1953.
The talks in Zavidovo, expected to begin at 1400 GMT, are rich in symbolism as it was at the same hunting lodge that Soviet leaders met with Communist chiefs from around the world, including Fidel Castro.
Formal talks between the two delegations will take place the following day at the Kremlin. The visit is expected to last a week, its length alone an indication of the trip's importance.
Relations already took a turn for the better last November when Medvedev visited Havana on a Latin American tour aimed at restoring what he called "privileged" Soviet-era relations with the region.
In December a group of Russian warships visited Havana on a tour seen as a deliberate attempt to challenge U.S. dominance in Latin America, although U.S. officials have remained sanguine about such Russian maneuvers.
On Raul Castro's current visit the focus will be business deals that include plans for a Russian consortium to explore oil fields off Cuba's coast in the Gulf of Mexico and joint projects in nickel production on the island.
Russia also may well reaffirm its support for the lifting of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba.
"Our country has consistently stood for normalizing the situation around Cuba, for its fully fledged reintegration into regional and world processes," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said ahead of the visit.