Putin to examine Black Sea shipping proposals from Turkey’s Erdogan

Moscow | Reuters — 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.

Turkey and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have long been seeking to get merchant shipping sailing more freely though the Black Sea, which in parts has become a naval war zone since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

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”.

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Putin met Erdogan and Guterres at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan.

“I haven’t even had time to read the materials …” Putin said. “Well, let’s see. We’ve never refused this.”

Turkey and the United Nations helped mediate the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal struck in July 2022 that allowed the safe export of nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukraine grain across the Black Seadespite the war.

Russia withdrew from the agreement after a year, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced serious obstacles.

Erdogan told reporters on the way back from Kazan that Putin was “engaged in a search in terms of achieving a permanent ceasefire”.

Turkey wants to promote peace talks

Erdogan said he had discussed the grain corridor with Russia, and that Putin had also discussed a possible swap of prisoners.

“Our wish is to start peace negotiations between the two countries as soon as possible, and reach a beneficial outcome,” Erdogan said.

Months of steady advances by Moscow’s forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, have 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 a frozen conflict along the lines of Korea or Cyprus, Putin said:

“Any outcome should be in favour 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 Crimea,which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, about 80 per cent of the Donbas – a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and over 70 per cent 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 Ukraine had already twice rejected Russian ceasefire initiatives.

— Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara