Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will visit Ukraine within a couple of weeks to try to defuse soaring tensions with Russia, Agence France-Presse reported, citing his foreign policy aide on Wednesday.
“In the next couple of weeks, President Erdoğan will be travelling to Ukraine to hold talks with President Zelensky there,” foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalın 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 Erdoğan has been speaking to both President (Vladimir) Putin and President Zelensky. In fact he even invited both of them to come to Turkey,” Kalın 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 recognizing Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.
The Kremlin has rejected Erdoğan’s past offers of mediation because of the lingering tensions over the drones.
