Expatica news

Erdogan to visit Ukraine ‘in couple of weeks’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Ukraine within a couple of weeks to try to defuse soaring tensions with Russia, his foreign policy aide said on Wednesday.

“In the next couple of weeks, President Erdogan will be travelling to Ukraine to hold talks with President Zelensky there,” foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin said.

“But we will remain in close contact with Russians to avoid any kind of military action whose consequences will be great and irreversible so we all have to do whatever we can to avoid that kind of situation,” he added.

“President Erdogan has been speaking to both President (Vladimir) Putin and President Zelensky. In fact he even invited both of them to come to Turkey,” Kalin said.

“Turkey remains available for any role that it can play to lower tensions between Russia and Ukraine.”

NATO member Turkey has angered Moscow by supplying Kyiv with combat drones and never recognising Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.

The Kremlin has rejected Erdogan’s past offers of mediation because of the lingering tensions over the drones.