Netanyahu was originally scheduled to fly on Thursday to Albania and take part in a meeting of the leaders of Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but postponed that trip because a number of the leaders who had planned to attend were unable to do so.
In a related development, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is scheduled to come to Israel at the end of the month, though no firm date has yet been set, diplomatic officials confirmed on Thursday.Poroshenko, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main rivals, was last in the country in 2015. He met Netanyahu in Davos, Switzerland, in January, where they discusses bilateral tie and a free trade agreement.The purpose of the visit, according to one Israeli official, is to conclude the trade talks and has nothing to do with the current tension between Jerusalem and Moscow over Syria’s downing of a Russian intelligence plane in September. A senior diplomatic official said that Netanyahu, who said last month he would be meeting Putin “soon” to discuss that incident, may meet the Russian president next month when they both are scheduled to attend a ceremony in France marking a century since the end of World War I. No official announcement of the meeting, however, has yet been released.