(VOVWORLD) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi as Turkey and the UN seek to revive a Ukraine grain export deal that helped ease a global food crisis.
Russia quit the deal in July - a year after it was brokered by the UN and Turkey - complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced obstacles and that not enough Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan met Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday to discuss grain ahead of the Erdogan meeting. Shoigu said it was not Russia’s fault that the grain deal had failed and repeated the Russian position that Moscow would return to it if all the promises made to Russia were fulfilled.
The Black Sea grain deal was intended to combat a global food crisis that the UN said had been worsened by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022.