French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna is going to Turkey on Monday to encourage her to continue her action “positiveon the war in Ukraine and onremain consistent with the efforts of the United Nations“. “I will be going myself this afternoon to Ankara and Istanbul“, she announced on RTL radio. “Turkey, which plays an active role in the region (…) sometimes plays a positive role (…) it must be encouraged in this direction and ensure that it remains fully consistent with the efforts of the United Nations“.
After his mediation to allow this summer the exit of cereals blocked in the port of Odessa after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday offered his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin the mediation of Turkey to help resolve the crisis around the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhya, occupied by Russian troops.
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Turkey maintains good relations with both Moscow and kyiv. If it provided kyiv with military drones, it refused to join the Western sanctions decreed against Russia after the launch of its offensive in Ukraine.
“Europe took sanctions, the United States too, a certain number of allied and partner countries also, but others did not adopt a policy of sanctions, for example, Turkey (…). It is important to ensure that countries that do not have sanctions for themselves do not serve as a platform to circumvent the sanctions adopted by the bulk of the international community.“, she said, saying that the sanctions against Russia “work and they will have more and more effects“.
“There are other possibilities of sanctions, in particular individual“, she said, after the European Union has already taken several sets of measures to hamper the Russian economy.