Putin and Erdogan are going to meet on September 4

Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are due to meet in the Russian city of Sochi on Monday, September 4, a Turkish diplomatic source told the Russian TASS news agency on Thursday.

“So far, the meeting is scheduled for September 4,” a source in Turkish diplomacy said.

Turkish leaders have yet to announce an official date for Erdogan’s visit to Russia, the official Russian news agency added.

A spokesman for Erdogan’s party said on Friday that the Turkish leader plans to talk to Putin about resuming a grain export deal that Russia withdrew from in July.

“Soon, [Erdogan] visit Sochi. We believe that new developments may occur after this visit,” Omer Celik said last week, quoted by the French news agency AFP.

Turkey is one of the parties to agreements that the UN signed in July 2022 with Moscow and Kiev to allow grain exports across the Black Sea, which has been suspended due to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In July of this year, Russia canceled the agreement, saying that Western sanctions imposed on it for invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, prevented it from exporting grains and agricultural fertilizers.

Since then, Moscow has threatened to attack ships leaving Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea.

Ukraine is now dependent on land routes and a shallow river port, which greatly limits exports.

After withdrawing from the agreement, Russia attacked Ukraine’s grain infrastructure, which earned Ukraine and the West accusations of deteriorating food security in the world.

According to the British magazine The Economist, before the war, Ukraine and Russia together supplied 28% of world wheat, 29% of barley, 15% of corn and 75% of sunflower oil.

During the year, the Black Sea initiative made it possible to send about 33 million tons of cereals and other food products from three Ukrainian ports to 45 countries of the world.

According to AFP, Turkey is trying to revive the original agreement in hopes of using it as a springboard for broader peace talks between Kiev and Moscow.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said during a visit to Kyiv on Friday that he sees no “alternative” to the renewal of the original agreement.

Russian diplomacy announced Fidan’s visit to Moscow this Thursday and Friday, during which his colleague Sergey Lavrov will receive him.

Discussions will focus on the situation in Ukraine, as well as “Syria, Libya and the Caucasus,” Russian diplomacy spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.