Moscow - Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel arrived in this capital on Monday, where he was received by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Riabkov, shortly after leaving from the northern city of St. Petersburg.

For this day, the president has planned a cultural program and tomorrow he will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, with whom he spoke almost a year ago in the Kremlin, on his first visit to this nation as head of state.

Diaz-Canel met this day with the governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, and with the top leader of the legislative Assembly of that Russian region, Viacheslav Makarov.

In the talks Beglov highlighted the increase ?almost double? of the commercial exchange between his region and Cuba to reach 25,500,000 dollars in 2018.

In addition, he said that 42 percent of Russian exports to industry belong to the field of machinery construction and more than 30 percent to electronic products. While supplies related to fishing in Cuba are growing, he said.

Such activity on the island has a tendency to increase, something that must be preserved, said the governor, who stated that Cuban-Russian relations stood the test of time.