ANKARA, TURKEY – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit Russia “soon” for talks with Vladimir Putin on reviving a deal to ship grain across the Black Sea, his party spokesman said on Monday.
The meeting will take place in Russia’s resort city of Sochi, Erdogan’s ruling party spokesman Omer Celik told reporters, adding that Turkey hoped to avert a looming “food crisis”.
The Bloomberg news agency had earlier reported that Erdogan could meet the Russian leader on September 8 before Erdogan travels to New Delhi to attend a G20 summit.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that a meeting was being prepared “intensively”, without giving a time or place for the talks.
Erdogan has used his good relations with Moscow and Kyiv to try to bring the two sides into formal peace talks.
Turkey helped negotiate the only major agreement signed by the warring sides since the February 2022 invasion – a deal to ship grain from three Ukrainian ports across the Black Sea.
Russia scuppered the UN-backed agreement last month, launching repeated attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure and warning that it may consider any ships in the Black Sea as military targets.
Erdogan is trying to revive the pact, hoping to use it as a springboard for broader peace talks.