MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, had proposed reviving contacts on Black Sea shipping but that he had not yet had time to study the documents.
Putin told Russian state television that Erdogan had “once again renewed these proposals to continue contacts related to shipping in the Black Sea, (and) on some other issues.”
Putin met Erdogan at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan as well as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“To be honest, I haven’t even had time to read the materials that our Turkish partners and friends have given us,” Putin said. “Well, let’s see. We have never refused this.”
Turkiye and the United Nations helped mediate the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal struck in July 2022 that had allowed the safe Black Sea export of nearly 33 million metric tonnes of Ukraine grain.
Russia withdrew from the agreement in July 2023, complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced serious obstacles.
Turkiye and Guterres have repeatedly tried to get merchant shipping sailing more freely though the Black Sea, which in some areas has been turned into a naval war zone since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The advance of Moscow’s forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia’s vast superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.
When asked if he felt that the war might become some sort of frozen conflict along the lines of Korea or Cyprus, Putin said: “Any outcome should be in favor of Russia, I speak bluntly, without any hesitation, and should proceed from the realities that are taking shape on the battlefield,” Putin said.
Russia controls about one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it annexed in 2014, about 80 percent of the Donbas — a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — and over 70 percent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
“We are not going to make any concessions here, there will be no trades,” Putin said. “We are ready to make these compromises, we are reasonable. But I don’t want to go into details right now, because there are no substantive negotiations.”
He said that Ukraine had already twice rejected Russian ceasefire initiatives but that Russian forces were advancing along the front.