President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Moldovan counterpart Maia Sandu on Monday discussed the latest developments regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a phone call, Erdoğan and Sandu also evaluated humanitarian aid and evacuation issues in Ukraine, the Turkish Communications Directorate said in a statement.
Fleeing the war, more than 1.7 million Ukrainians have so far crossed into Central Europe, the United Nation's refugee agency said on Monday, as thousands more streamed across the borders.
Out of that, some 83,000 went to neighboring Moldova, according to the UNHCR. Over 20,000 Ukrainian citizens were evacuated to Turkey as of Sunday, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said.
Erdoğan also stressed that the meeting of the top Ukrainian and Russian diplomats will help to cross an important threshold on the road to peace.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba have agreed to meet at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey on Thursday, with the participation of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
NATO member Turkey, which shares a maritime border with Russia and Ukraine in the Black Sea, had been offering to mediate between the sides. Ankara has good relations with both Moscow and Kyiv, and has called Russia’s invasion unacceptable.
Çavuşoğlu said on Monday that in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, Erdoğan repeated Turkey’s offer to host the meeting and Lavrov later accepted.
“We especially hope that this meeting is a turning point and ... an important step towards peace and stability,” he said, adding both ministers had asked for him to join the talks.
It will mark the first potential talks between the top diplomats since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia calls the campaign it launched on Feb. 24 a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and remove leaders it describes as neo-Nazis.
Ukraine and its Western allies call this a transparent pretext for an invasion to conquer a nation of 44 million people.
The invasion has uprooted millions of people in what the U.N. says is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
