Sarkozy, Putin held ‘private’ meeting

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he had a private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, without revealing the nature of the conversation.

“I met him, we even had lunch together,” Sarkozy told AFP as he left a concert in Moscow given by his wife Carla Bruni.

Putin has had limited contact with Western officials amid a diplomatic crisis over Ukraine.

Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin said the meeting “took place in Sochi,” the Black Sea resort city, earlier in the day.

He added that the meeting was of a “private nature”, and Sarkozy, who left office in 2012, would not comment on the details of their discussion.

Current French President Francois Hollande is due to meet Putin in Paris on Thursday.

Following the meeting, Sarkozy slipped into his wife’s concert in the Russian capital about an hour late, but was applauded by the crowd following the concert when they realised he was in the room.

He was met by onlookers who took photographs and “selfies” with the ex-president by the exit.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a long-time friend of the Kremlin strongman, drew criticism when he was seen embracing Putin at a private party in Saint Petersburg while the Ukraine crisis was at its height.