The presidents of Russia and Bulgaria will meet in Moscow this week for the first time since a gas crisis strained bilateral ties, the Kremlin said Monday.
President Georgy Parvanov will arrive in Moscow Wednesday and will have talks with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, it said in a statement on the Kremlin Web site.
Russia's action in cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine on New Year's Day resulted in several countries in Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, being deprived of gas supplies for almost two weeks.
In January, Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev protested to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that it was unacceptable that Europe "is held hostage to a trade row."
Calling the row "unfortunate" in a recent interview posted on the Kremlin Web site, Medvedev said Russia and European nations must "work together to think about how to neutralize these threats in the future."
He said the talks would focus on pipeline projects that circumvent Ukraine, like the Nord Stream pipeline via the Baltic, and South Stream, which crosses the Black Sea from Russia into Bulgaria
Medvedev said the two new routes would diversify Europe's gas supplies so that it wouldn't have to depend on the "caprice" of foreign governments, again painting Ukraine as the instigator of the gas crisis.