ISTANBUL: Turkey expects that the Black Sea Grain Initiative, also known as the grain deal, will be extended, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after one-on-one talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, reported Sputnik.
Erdogan and Zelenskyy held talks at the Vahdettin Mansion in Istanbul on Friday night. The talks lasted about 2.5 hours.
Speaking at a press conference after the talks Erdogan said he “hoped” for the extension of the grain deal concluded in July 2022 in Istanbul.
Zelenskyy told reporters after the talks with Erdogan that he believed there should be different grain corridors. He also invited Turkey to a “global peace summit” being prepared by Ukraine.
Erdogan said that he expected to discuss the grain deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin either by phone or in person. The Turkish president said he expected Putin to visit Turkey in August.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that he did not rule out contacts between Putin and Erdogan in the near future.
Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations struck a deal to provide a humanitarian maritime corridor for ships with food and fertiliser exports from Ukrainian Black Sea ports on July 22, 2022. Moscow has since agreed to several extensions to the grain deal, which is now due to expire in mid-July, but complained that its memorandum component has not been fully implemented.
On June 7, the Russian Defence Ministry said that a Ukrainian sabotage group had blown up the Tolyatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline in the Kharkiv Region. Peskov said that the explosion would complicate the extension of the grain deal.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said earlier this week that Russia believed July 18 to be the day of the grain deal’s termination.-Bernama