Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will be received in Moscow by his Russian counterpart Serguei Lavrov, the Russian diplomacy spokeswoman announced on Wednesday, with a meeting between the two countries’ presidents planned.
“From August 31 to September 1, the Turkish foreign minister will pay a working visit to Moscow to discuss a number of issues” with Sergei Lavrov, Maria Zakharova said at a press conference.
This visit comes six days after Hakan Fidan traveled to Kiev for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The situation in Ukraine will be at the center of the discussions, Zakharova said, as well as “Syria, Libya and the Caucasus”.
Over the past year and a half, Turkey has acted as a mediator in various situations in the context of the war in Ukraine and it was under the auspices of Ankara, together with the UN, that Kiev and Moscow reached an agreement last year to stop exporting Ukrainian grains.
Still, Moscow rejected the deal in mid-July, and Turkey has since tried to bring the parties around the same table in hopes of holding broader peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
On Monday, Ankara announced that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would travel “soon” to Sochi, Russia, to discuss reinstating the grain deal with Vladimir Putin.
So far, the date of the visit has not been formally announced.
According to Maria Zakharova, Lavrov and Fidan will also analyze the “state of Russian-Turkish bilateral cooperation, namely with regard to the implementation of strategic projects in the energy sector”.
At the suggestion of Vladimir Putin, the two countries are studying the creation of a new “gas distribution center” in Turkey, which could enable the supply of Russian gas to the European Union, bypassing existing gas pipelines through Ukraine and under the Baltic Sea. .
Source: DN
