President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, plan to fulfill on Friday within the southern Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi, for a second face-to-face dialog in lower than three weeks towards a posh backdrop of dovetailing and competing pursuits.
Aides to the leaders portrayed the talks in Sochi as a continuation of their discussions in Iran on July 19 — a few of which included Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme chief — masking all the things from drones to grain shipments to vitality to Syria.
Mr. Erdogan has emerged as an necessary mediator between Ukraine and Russia, which is probing for methods to interrupt out of the financial and political isolation imposed by the West over its invasion of Ukraine. Turkey, a NATO member and long-frustrated E.U. applicant, proved instrumental in forging an settlement between the 2 warring nations to restart Ukrainian grain shipments by way of the Black Sea urgently.
The deal is now being examined, with an preliminary ship having left Ukraine’s Port of Odesa on Monday sure for Lebanon and three extra cleared to depart Ukrainian ports on Friday, with grain cargoes desperately wanted to assist tackle a rising world meals scarcity.
Mr. Erdogan is treading a effective line to retain the flexibility to speak to each Russia, NATO’s foe, and to Western members of the alliance. Turkey has held to its refusal to affix Western sanctions towards Russia, irking its NATO allies, however Mr. Erdogan additionally, in a vital transfer, eased his preliminary objections to Sweden and Finland becoming a member of the alliance as a bulwark towards Russian aggression.
Russia is a vital provider of vitality to Turkey, offering one fourth of the nation’s crude imports and virtually half of its pure gasoline purchases final yr. Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear company, is constructing a nuclear energy plant on the Mediterranean projected to offer 10 % of Turkey’s vitality wants after its scheduled completion in 2026.
For its half, Turkey is turning into an necessary transshipment level for items headed to Russia now that many Western freight corporations not deal with Russia-bound shipments for concern of defying sanctions, the Turkish newspaper Dunya reported on Thursday. And the nation stays a well-liked vacation spot for Russian vacationers, with 1.4 million visiting this yr, in response to Interfax.
Nevertheless, stark variations stay between the 2 leaders. Their nations have backed opposing sides within the civil battle in Turkey’s neighbor, Syria. The Kremlin has expended blood and treasure to shore up President Bashar al-Assad, whereas Turkey, which has absorbed greater than 3.7 million Syrian battle refugees, helps an opposing insurgent faction and is threatening a brand new army offensive in Syria’s north. They’ve additionally been concerned on opposing sides within the violently flaring border dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Their relations relating to weaponry are additionally complicated. In recent times, Turkey defied its NATO companions to purchase Russian antiaircraft missiles. And now, Russia — starved by war-related Western sanctions for know-how like steerage techniques for missiles and drones — is urgently searching for matériel, a subject the talks on Friday promise to deal with.
“Army-technical cooperation between the 2 nations is completely on the agenda, and the actual fact that our interplay is growing on this delicate sphere exhibits that, on the entire, all the vary of our interrelations is at a really excessive stage,” Dmitri S. Peskov, Russia’s presidential press secretary, informed reporters on Wednesday, in response to the Interfax information company.
Safak Timur contributed reporting.