Putin arrives in Cairo to meet with Sisi

CAIRO: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Cairo on Monday for a meeting with Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, an airport official said, after a surprise visit to Syria.

Russian news agencies reported that Putin had on Monday visited Moscow's Hmeimim airbase in Syria, where he gave the order for a partial withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria.

The Egyptian airport official said Putin's plane had landed in Cairo around 1015 GMT, apparently following a stopover in Syria.

Putin last visited Cairo in February 2015, when he and Sisi reached an agreement for Russia to build Egypt's first nuclear power plant in Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast.

Egyptian media reported that a final deal on the project could be signed during Putin's Monday visit.

Another question will be whether Putin could announce the resumption of Russian flights to Egypt, which were suspended in 2015 after the Islamic State group bombed a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board.