Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will be received in Moscow by his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, a spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy said this Wednesday, with a scheduled meeting between the presidents of both countries.
“From August 31 to September 1, the Turkish Foreign Minister will make a working visit to Moscow to discuss a number of issues” with Sergei Lavrov, Maria Zakharova said at a press conference.
The visit came six days after Hakan Fidan traveled to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Discussions will focus on the situation in Ukraine, 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 within the framework 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 allowing the export of Ukrainian cereals.
Despite this, Moscow rejected the deal in mid-July, and since then Turkey has been trying to bring the parties to the same table in the hope of broader peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
Ankara announced on Monday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will travel to Sochi, Russia “soon” to discuss the restoration of the grain deal with Vladimir Putin.
The date of the visit has not been officially announced yet.
According to Maria Zakharova, Lavrov and Fidan will also analyze “the state of Russian-Turkish bilateral cooperation, in particular, in terms of implementing strategic projects in the energy sector.”
At the suggestion of Vladimir Putin, the two countries are exploring the creation of a new “gas distribution center” in Turkey, which could allow Russian gas to be delivered to the European Union, bypassing existing gas pipelines through Ukraine and along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. .