Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Astana on Thursday, on the sidelines of a regional summit in the capital of Kazakhstan, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
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“Preparations for the meeting are underway” between MM Putin and Erdogan, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The meeting, which will provide an opportunity to discuss the situation in “Ukraine, bilateral relations and exchange of views on topical issues,” will take place on Thursday, he said.
Mr Erdogan is expected to leave for Astana on Wednesday for talks with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev before meeting Mr Putin there on Thursday, a Turkish official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Turkey, which has maintained a neutral position since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has in the past offered its mediation to start talks between the two warring factions, with whom it has good ties.
Erdogan, who is yet to comment on Monday’s Russian attacks in Ukraine that left at least 19 dead and around 100 wounded, said Westerners appreciated Ankara’s “balanced” approach to the conflict.
Turkey’s chief of diplomacy, Mevlut Cavusoglu, called his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kouleba on Monday after the latest Russian attacks, a Turkish diplomatic source underlined without further details.
On Tuesday, Mr Cavusoglu called on Moscow and Kyiv for a ceasefire “as soon as possible”.
Turkey’s and Russia’s presidents met on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan last month.
Mr Erdogan harbors hopes of bringing Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy together for peace talks, which the warring parties do not appear to want but Turkish officials believe are essential and realistic.
Although Turkey is a member of NATO, it has not joined Western sanctions against Russia. Mr Erdogan, who is facing a tough economic situation ahead of elections scheduled for June, is keen to expand trade with Moscow.
However, under pressure from the United States, Ankara announced last month that the last three Turkish banks still accepting Russian bank cards had decided to stop doing so.
The move followed weeks of increasingly urgent warnings from Washington urging Turkey to limit its economic ties with Russia or risk facing sanctions itself.