MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th March, 2023) The United States and the United Kingdom do not wish for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to broker a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as they are interested in the conflict in Ukraine lasting as long as possible, Cagri Erhan, a member of the Turkish Presidency's Security and Foreign Policies Council, told Sputnik in an interview.
"They (the US and the UK) don't want Zelenskyy and Putin to come together with Erdogan. They don't want that these three make a photo. And they want to make the war as long as possible. They don't think about the future of Ukrainian people. The don't think about the peace," Erhan said.
At the same time, the Turkish official believes Erdogan will continue trying to bring the two leaders together.
"He (Erdogan) is the only man who can access both to Putin and Zelenskyy. And I think that he can find some kind of ways to bring them together. And it is not important to make a photo, it is important to reach concrete results. And first concrete result will be a ceasefire of course and afterwards maybe there will be a compromise after diplomatic bargaining," Erhan concluded.
Turkey hosted brief talks between Russia and Ukraine in the initial phase of hostilities last March, but the peace process never progressed. In late September, Putin said that Moscow was still open to talks with Kiev and called on Ukraine to stop the hostilities. Zelenskyy, for his part, stated that Kiev was ready for dialogue with Moscow only if another president came to power in Russia, a demand he later dropped.
