MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to Turkey next week, the Kremlin said Wednesday, marking his first journey abroad in nearly two months following a mysterious back injury that forced him to postpone numerous foreign trips.
Mr. Putin is scheduled to take part in the third gathering of the High-Level Russian-Turkish Cooperation Council and will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Dec. 3 in Istanbul, the Kremlin said in a statement on its website.
The trip follows weeks of speculation about the state of the 60-year-old Mr. Putin's health in a country with a long history of secretiveness about its leaders' well-being. The Kremlin dismissed reports in late October that Mr. Putin had suffered a serious back injury after he had postponed trips to India, Bulgaria, Turkmenistan and Turkey, and had been working from his residence outside Moscow for several weeks.
A report in leading Russian business newspaper Vedomosti said Mr. Putin may have aggravated an old injury during a hard landing at the end of a September publicity event in which he
piloted a motorized hang glider to help lead endangered cranes to their winter nesting grounds.
His spokesman said the president had simply suffered a pulled muscle while working out and the canceled trips were a coincidence.
Mr. Putin—a judo black belt whose vigor has long been part of his public image—first appeared to be limping and in pain during September's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Vladivostok, right after the flight with the cranes.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at
lukas.alpert@dowjones.com
