Istanbul, Turkey– President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the margins of a regional summit in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on Wednesday, a Turkish official told AFP.
Erdogan met Putin on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan last month.
He still hopes to bring Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky together for truce talks that neither side particularly wants but which Turkish officials insist are both essential and realistic.
NATO member Turkey has refrained from joining Western sanctions against Russia.
Erdogan is keen to boost trade with Moscow as he tries to stabilise the battered Turkish economy in the run up to elections next June.
Last month Ankara bowed to pressure from the United States and confirmed the last three Turkish banks still processing Russian card payments were pulling the plug.
The decision followed weeks of increasingly blunt warnings from Washington for Turkey to either limit economic ties with Russia or face the threat of sanctions itself.
