Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Samarkand confirmed the “next” delivery of natural gas to Turkey, described as a “reliable partner”, and announced that a “quarter” of those deliveries would be paid for in rubles. This clarification during his bilateral meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirms the agreement reached between the two leaders at their previous meeting in Sochi in southern Russia earlier in August.
“Our agreement should come into force soon and allow us to supply natural gas to Turkey, 25% of which will be paid in rubles,” Vladimir Putin said during a more than hour-long bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan . The proportion of these gas supplies paid for in Russian currency was not specified during their previous exchange. Vladimir Putin, whose country has been subject to Western sanctions since invading Ukraine on February 24, also announced that he had received “the signal” authorizing the export of Russian products from Turkish ports.
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“Our companies have received the signal to be able to export their products from Turkey”, which he described as a “reliable partner” and expressed the desire to “significantly increase trade with her”. Ankara played a key role in finalizing an agreement with Kyiv and Moscow in July under the aegis of the United Nations, allowing Ukrainian grain to be exported across the Black Sea and the Bosphorus. But Moscow is now complaining that the part of the agreement signed at the same time on the export of Russian agricultural products has remained ineffective.
Since the beginning of the war, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to maintain relations with Kyiv and Moscow, whose representatives he twice brought together. Before their tete-a-tete, he called on Russia to end the war in Ukraine “as soon as possible”. “We are working on ending the conflict in Ukraine as quickly as possible through diplomatic channels,” he said to the participants at the summit, especially in the presence of Vladimir Putin. But while Recep Tayyip Erdogan has provided Kyiv with combat drones, in recent months he has multiplied conciliatory gestures towards Moscow, particularly on trade, while his country faces nine months of a severe economic crisis and official inflation exceeding 80% ahead of the presidential election in Turkey.