A European Union-Russia summit kicked off Thursday in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk amid growing misunderstandings that revealed fundamental disagreements between Moscow and Brussels. President Dmitry Medvedev dined Thursday evening with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, as well as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Afterward, leaders enjoyed a riverboat cruise on the Amur River. The main talks are on Friday. The official topics on the agenda include cooperation in overcoming the global financial crisis, European energy security and a new European security pact -- a pet foreign-policy project of Medvedev`s that he had spelled out within weeks of assuming the presidency last year. European officials dampened hopes that the talks would produce any results on the core issues of energy and trade, pointing out that positions differed too widely. Russian diplomats also identified EU trade barriers for Russian energy and goods as contentious issues but added the Kremlin`s increasingly favored topic of the rehabilitation of Nazism in the Baltic states. A new early warning mechanism on gas flows through Ukraine will probably not be signed, a senior European diplomat told The Moscow Times on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The EU wants to extend an early warning mechanism and the continuation of an agreement monitoring gas flows from Russia to the EU via Ukraine. Diplomats had earlier suggested that an improved warning mechanism might be one of the few documents that could be signed at the summit. The wording now is merely that "the issue is on the agenda, and both sides are going to discuss ways to improve its functioning," the diplomat said. European consumers get about a quarter of their natural gas from Russia, most of it via Ukraine. Both sides are also likely to trade barbs over a new agreement on energy relations. European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, who is also in Khabarovsk, has rejected a recent proposal by Medvedev for a revised Energy Charter. Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have championed a new document to replace the charter from the 1990s that Moscow has signed but not ratified. The Energy Charter Treaty, adopted, in 1991 establishes rules for resolving disputes in the industry. The Kremlin has argued that the charter is outdated and that it has failed to regulate disputes like the one with Ukraine, when Russia turned off its gas supplies last January. "We believe this document is dead," an unidentified Foreign Ministry official was quoted by Kommersant as saying Thursday. Medvedev has said the alternative proposal -- which will cover coal, nuclear fuel, oil and gas -- aims to balance the interests of producers, buyers and transit states. Curiously enough, Medvedev`s proposal, which was posted on the Kremlin`s web site on April 21, also lists exotic energy sources like brushwood and charcoal produced from nut shells. The Europeans, however, argue that the old charter should continue to hold until energy relations are revised within a far-reaching new cooperation agreement with Moscow, negotiations for which started after much bickering last year. An unidentified Kremlin source told RIA-Novosti that if both sides agree on a framework document rather than a comprehensive one, the agreement could be signed before the end of the year. The European diplomat rejected this suggestion as "rubbish" because it would mean ditching the European concept for the negotiations. "A mandate was established by all member states to negotiate a comprehensive agreement. There has to be a package," the diplomat said, adding that to abandon comprehensiveness in favor of a loose framework document would mean "goodbye to any agreement." Expectations for the summit have been low because both sides have recently achieved little progress on trade and energy disputes that have riled relations for years. Meanwhile, the EU`s new neighborhood policy and the situation in Georgia have become topics for disagreement. Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Thursday that the Russian officials will also discuss violations of the rights of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia and the EU`s "inadmissible connivance to the attempts to make heroes of the Nazi henchmen" -- in the Baltic countries during World War II -- "and of aspirations to rewrite certain pages of the European history of the 20th century," Interfax reported. In addition to discussing the broader EU-Russia cooperation accord, which "Moscow hopes ... will go on without unnecessary and sometimes absurd political foot-dragging," Nesterenko said, Russia will confirm at the summit its preparedness to move to visa-free travel between the EU and Russia. Speculation is rife that the choice of venue -- located thousands of kilometers from Europe -- is intended to send a message to the EU. In televised comments Thursday, Medvedev told students in Khabarovsk that EU leaders at last year`s summit in the western Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiisk had remarked about the long distances they had traveled. "They didn`t know what they were in for" this year, he said, laughing with the students. "They will feel the grandeur of Russia."