We can neither confirm nor deny the reports, an advisor with the Russian Embassy, Aleksandar Botyanovski, told Hina when asked if Putin would visit Zagreb in June.
He added that the embassy had not received any reliable information on the matter from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which was the source quoted by the Croatian press.
The Croatian Foreign Ministry said that so far it had not received a diplomatic note confirming a visit by the Russian president.
The ministry said, however, that Croatian President Stjepan Mesic and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov had discussed at a meeting in Zagreb in early March the possibility of a Croatian-Russian summit meeting.
Croatian papers have reported that Putin accepted Mesic's invitation to visit Croatia in the middle of the year on Wednesday. The press also claims that the decision on the visit was made ten days after Putin and his Greek and Bulgarian counterparts signed an agreement on the construction of an oil pipeline running across the territory of the two countries, thus removing the biggest obstacle to the development of Croatian-Russian relations, the Druzba Adria project.
The press speculates that apart from Zagreb, the Russian president may also visit Belgrade and Sarajevo, the main objective of his tour of the region being efforts to regulate the status of Kosovo.