ANKARA
\nPresident of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday he believed that only Ankara was capable of helping to reach progress in the ongoing negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
\n\u201cToday, Turkey is the only country capable of maintaining close relations with both sides\u2026 and provide for reaching certain progress by means of uniting the opposing sides,\u201d Erdogan said speaking after a session of the country\u2019s Cabinet of Ministers in Ankara earlier in the day.
\nAccording to Erdogan, Turkey \u201cdeeply feels the consequences of the Russian and Ukrainian crisis, particularly in regard to prices on food and energy supplies.\u201d
\n\u201cWe cannot prevent the exponential price hike on oil and natural gas,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are seriously worried with the growth of prices on raw materials used in the food industry.\u201d
\nPresident Putin said earlier in the day that Kiev drove negotiations with Moscow into a dead end again by deviating from the agreements reached during the Istanbul round.
\nThe Russian-Ukrainian negotiations kicked off on February 28 with several meetings between the two delegations held in Belarus. Later, the negotiators continued contacts by way of videoconferencing. On March 29, a new face-to-face round of talks was held in Istanbul.
\nOn February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced recognizing the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk People\u2019s Republics. Russia recognized the Donbass republics in accordance with the DPR and LPR constitutions within the boundaries of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions as of the beginning of 2014.
\nRussian President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine in order to protect people \u201cwho have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.\u201d The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. The DPR and the LPR launched an operation to liberate their territories under Kiev\u2019s control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ANKARA President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday he believed that only Ankara was capable of helping to reach progress in the ongoing negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. \u201cToday, Turkey is the only country capable of maintaining close relations with both sides\u2026 and provide for reaching certain progress by means of uniting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-254875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n