Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the leaders of Russia and Ukraine are “not yet ready” to meet face-to-face to discuss the war, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters on his flight back from China, Erdoğan said he had raised the issue in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin and later in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He said that negotiations in Istanbul in recent months showed the path to peace remained open but that the sides were not prepared for a leaders’ summit.
Turkey favors “raising the level of negotiations gradually” to turn hopes for peace into concrete results, Erdoğan added, stressing that any initiative would ultimately need to be handled at the leaders’ level.
A NATO member, Turkey has kept channels open with both Moscow and Kyiv since Russia’s 2022 invasion and has sought to mediate between them.