Erdogan to visit Russia to reach new grain deal with Putin

(Patria) - Turkey announced on Monday that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Russia "soon" for talks with Vladimir Putin on reviving the Black Sea grain deal that could be used as a springboard for broader peace negotiations between Ukraine.

Erdogan's party spokesperson Omer Celik told reporters that the meeting will take place in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi and will focus on preventing an impending "food crisis," AFP reported. "As you know, (Erdogan) will visit Sochi soon," he said.

Bloomberg News had earlier reported that Erdogan could meet with the Russian president on September 8. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the meeting was being prepared "intensively," but no time or place for the talks has been set.

Erdogan has leveraged his good relations with both Moscow and Kyiv to try to bring the two sides into formal peace negotiations. He last met Putin in Kazakhstan last October. They also held a teleconference in April to inaugurate a nuclear power plant built by Russia ahead of Erdogan's re-election to a new term.

Turkey helped broker the only major deal between the two sides since last year's invasion – an agreement to ship grain from three Ukrainian ports via the Black Sea.

Moscow last month pulled out of the UN-backed deal, citing non-compliance with provisions aimed at easing Russia's agricultural and fertilizer exports. Russia has since launched successive attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure and warned that it could consider all ships in the Black Sea as military targets. Ukraine has also intensified attacks on Russian targets around the Black Sea.

But Erdogan has remained steadfast. He sent Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to Kyiv last Friday in an attempt to bring Ukraine into the negotiations. Fidan used the visit to urge Ukraine to abandon its attempts to establish a new route, reportedly backed by Washington and the European Union, that ships could use without Russian interference during the autumn harvest.

"We know that alternative routes (for grain shipments) are being sought, but we do not see an alternative to the original initiative because they carry risks," Fidan said in Kyiv. Fidan is expected to visit Moscow in the coming days.

Ukraine now relies on land routes and a shallow river port that severely limits its grain export volumes. It has sent two ships on a new route from the port of Odesa to Istanbul, hugging the coasts of NATO members Romania and Bulgaria. But Turkish officials claim this is too dangerous.

Moscow warns that it can consider all ships in the Black Sea as military targets. The Russian navy fired on and briefly boarded a Turkish-owned ship that entered the Black Sea earlier this month.