After Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declining of an invitation from Ankara to watch a friendly in Antalya on Wednesday, Moscow has announced that Putin does not have any plans to visit Turkey in the near future, according to a report on Tuesday in the Russian news portal Sputnik.
Upon a question of whether the Russian leader plans to travel to Turkey, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, “This information does not correspond to reality; there are no plans for now for the near future.”
Peskov on Monday denied the news that Putin would travel to Antalya to watch a friendly between Turkish and Russian football teams. “We will support our team from a distance,” he added.
It was previously reported that Putin had accepted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s invitation to watch the match together in Antalya.
Putin and Erdoğan discussed bilateral relations, Turkey’s ground incursion into Syria and the possibility of opening a humanitarian corridor to Aleppo in a phone conversation on Friday.
During the conversation Putin and Erdoğan also agreed to have a meeting during the G-20 Summit in China in September, reported the Anadolu news agency.
Putin and Erdoğan met in St. Petersburg on Aug. 16, the first time the two have met since a falling out over the downing of a Russian fighter jet by the Turkish air forces on Nov. 24, 2015.
The Erdoğan-Putin phone call came after news that a meeting scheduled to take place between Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, in Ankara on Friday was postponed to a later date.
