The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has assured today that his objective is to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine “as soon as possible”, despite the difficulties on the battlefield, in order to stop the bloodshed.

“Our goal is to maintain the momentum achieved, despite the difficulties on the ground and when before achieving a ceasefire and stopping the bloodshed,” Erdogan said at the summit of leaders of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Measures in Asia (CICA) held in the Kazakh capital.

“We all suffer the consequences of the crisis in Ukraine, regionally and globally. He always said that, with the help of diplomacy, a just peace can be achieved,” stressed the Turkish president.

Before the leaders of some twenty countries that have gathered in Astana, including the Russian, Vladimir Putin, Erdogan warned that “there is no winner in war or loser in a just peace.”

For the Turkish president, who will meet today in Astana precisely with Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine, the intense joint efforts of Ankara and the UN to eliminate the consequences of the Russian invasion have been recognized “by the whole world”, and has given as an example the Istanbul agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain to alleviate the world food crisis.

He also underlined the success of the largest prisoner exchange to date between Russia and Ukraine at the end of September, in which kyiv broke the release of more than 200 prisoners, including the “heroes” of the Azov regiment who defended the metallurgical plant of Azovstal in the city of Mariupol.

Russia managed to bring 55 Russian prisoners home, in addition to freeing Putin’s close friend, Viktor Medvedchuk.

Turkey mediator role

The Turkish head of state has tried to assume a mediating role in the Ukraine war, in which Ankara will support kyiv diplomatically, but without imposing sanctions on Russia and maintaining a good relationship with Moscow.

Erdogan and Putin will face each other today for the fourth time this year, and the Kremlin believes that the Turkish president will officially present his proposals on possible negotiations between Moscow and the West to his Russian counterpart.

The Turkish newspaper Milliyet recently exposed that Turkey is ready to organize talks between Russia, the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, a plan that would have already been presented to Washington and the first comments would supposedly be “positive”.

In turn, Putin is expected to explain to Erdogan his proposal to create a large Russian gas distribution center for Europe in Turkey in the face of leaks that totally disabled Nord Stream 1 and partially Nord Stream 2 and the intention of the European Union (EU) not to resume the flow of Russian hydrocarbons through these gas pipelines.

Categorized in: