Türkiye proposes to Ukraine to host a new round of negotiations with Russia and the United States

In their meeting on Saturday night, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Turkey host a new round of negotiations in the trilateral format (Ukraine, Russia and the United States), which is scheduled to resume this November. Zelensky himself, in an interview with the local channel CNN Türk broadcast this Sunday, assured that he is “willing to meet with [the Russian leader, Vladimir] Putin in Turkey.”

“We have discussed the possibilities regarding this and other formats, specifically the possibility of including Turkey and the rest of Europe in the process, and the possibility of holding this meeting here in Turkey,” Zelensky had stated, hours before, during the press conference with Erdogan.

However, Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov has cooled the prospects for the participation of these other countries by stating that this next round of talks should initially be held in a trilateral format between Russia, Ukraine and the United States, as he told the Interfax agency. When asked if Putin would respond to a call from Zelensky, Ushakov said he would, since the Russian president “has never refused to talk.”

Representatives of Ukraine and Russia had said in recent days that their governments are willing to resume negotiations starting this coming week – once the US mid-term elections have passed – although until now the United Arab Emirates or Switzerland had been considered as a possible venue for the meeting.

In Istanbul, Zelensky met for several hours with Erdogan, his Minister of Defense, Yasar Güler, and the head of the secret services, Ibrahim Kalin, to discuss possible new negotiations, but he has also held meetings with the ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Bartholomew I, as well as with Turkish companies in the energy sector with which, as a result of the war, collaboration has increased.

Turkey has already hosted several rounds of negotiations both at the beginning of the war and last year and, although they have not produced results in terms of achieving ceasefires, they have reached agreements on issues such as the exchange of prisoners or the creation of humanitarian corridors or for the export of grain.

This is precisely the main interest of Turkey, very concerned about the increase in attacks by both contenders against merchant ships in the Black Sea, which have caused dozens of deaths among sailors since last June, have damaged or sunk numerous ships, some of them belonging to Turkish shipping companies or that traded with Turkey, and have considerably reduced the number of ships that dare to trade in these waters. “We cannot accept these attacks under any circumstances, regardless of who carries them out or the justification offered,” Erdogan criticized during his appearance with Zelensky. For this reason, his Government has proposed the creation of a new protected corridor, similar to the one agreed in 2020 for the export of Ukrainian and Russian cereal to international markets.