Sochi

Türkiye is keen to expand its cooperation with Russian nuclear company Rosatom in the Sinop Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) project, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar has said.

Türkiye's foreign minister Hakan Fidan said on a visit to Moscow on Aug. 31 that reviving a deal to ship Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea was "critical" for food security.

Fidan was in Moscow to prepare an informal summit between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Russia's Black Sea resort city of Sochi next week.

A much-anticipated meeting between Turkish and Russian presidents over the fate of the grain initiative will be held on Sept. 4 in the Russian resort city of Sochi, only days after the two sides' top diplomats, Hakan Fidan and Sergey Lavrov, had talks on the same issue as well as on other bilateral and regional matters in Moscow.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is to visit Russia "soon" for talks with Vladimir Putin on reviving a deal to ship grain across the Black Sea, his party spokesman said Monday.

The meeting will take place in Russia's resort city of Sochi, Erdoğan's ruling party spokesman Ömer Çelik told reporters, adding that Türkiye hoped to avert a looming "food crisis".

Over the past few months, the situation in the South Caucasus region has begun to change rapidly. Great powers, countries of Asia and Europe, express their desire to strengthen and develop relations with Azerbaijan. The reliability and desire of Baku to develop a peace agenda in the region has attracted wide attention.

President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Aug. 5 adopted a statement pledging to boost political and economic cooperation including in energy and trade.

The talks between Putin and Erdoğan came as Russia's isolation grows following its intervention in Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, Russia, September 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/VLADIMIR SMIRNOV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL.

"We warn Greece once more to avoid dreams, statements and actions that will lead to regret, as it did a century ago, and to return to its senses," Erdogan said, in a reference to Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin (not pictured) at a meeting in Sochi, Russia, 28 September 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/VLADIMIR SMIRNOV/ SPUTNIK / KREMLIN POOL MANDATORY CREDIT

Ahead of the Winter Olympics that is set to begin on February 4 in Beijing, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Wednesday (local time) suggested that the Olympics could affect Russian President Vladimir Putin's calculations over a possible invasion of Ukraine.

In the shadow of the energy crisis in Europe but also of the frosty EU- Russia relations, because of Nord Stream 2, Athens and Moscow are in negotiations for the gas supply contract between Gazprom and DEPA Commercial.