p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #101010; -webkit-text-stroke: #101010} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font-kerning: none; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #000000} span.s3 {text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none; color: #347ab7; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #347ab7} span.s4 {font: 14.0px Calibri; font-kerning: none} p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #101010; -webkit-text-stroke: #101010} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font-kerning: none; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #000000} span.s3 {text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none; color: #347ab7; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #347ab7} span.s4 {font-kerning: none; background-color: #fffb01} span.s5 {text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none; color: #0433ff; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #0433ff} span.s6 {font: 14.0px Calibri; font-kerning: none; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #000000} On March 26-27, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Lebanese President Michel Aoun in Moscow. It was the Lebanese president's first trip to Russia as a national leader, and only the third visit of a Lebanese president to Moscow in the history of bilateral relations.

During the two-day visit, Aoun met with, among others, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, Metropolitan Hilarion, the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, and Igor Sechin, the chairman of Rosneft Corp. At the meeting with Putin, attended on the Russian side by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov and Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin, the Lebanese president was accompanied by his son-in-law, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, and daughter, Mireille Aoun al-Hashem, who works as a senior presidential adviser.

Aoun’s trip was timed with the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Beirut. Despite dynamic political contacts, trade and economic cooperation between Russia and Lebanon remains underdeveloped. Trade flow between the two sides in 2018 amounted to $470 million, decreasing by about 26% compared with the previous year, when it stood at $634 million.

At the same time, Russia and Lebanon have expanded their partnership in the oil and gas industry. In December 2017, Novatek, a Russian gas corporation taking part in a consortium with the French multinational Total and and the Italian multinational Eni, won a tender for exploitation of gas fields 4 and 9 situated on the Lebanese shelf. In January 2019, Rosneft and the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water Resources signed an agreement according to which the Russian company will take up operational management of an oil storage terminal in the Lebanese port of Tripoli for the next 20 years.