By Daren Butler and Max Hunder
ISTANBUL/KYIV, April 4 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced greater security co-operation with Turkey after meeting his counterpart Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Saturday, as Kyiv seeks to leverage its wartime know-how on the international stage.
Zelenskiy said that he had agreed “new steps” in security cooperation with the Turkish president, and that teams would finalise the details shortly.
“This applies above all to the areas in which we can support Turkey: expertise, technology and experience,” he wrote on Telegram.
Erdogan told Zelenskiy that Turkey would continue to support negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end their war, the Turkish presidency said.
Zelenskiy said that the two leaders discussed co-operation opportunities in joint gas infrastructure projects and joint gas field development.
TURKEY WANTS MARITIME SAFETY IN BLACK SEA
Turkey, a NATO member that has kept close to both sides, hosted initial peace talks early in the war in 2022, the only such talks until last year when U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new bid to end the fighting.
At Saturday’s meeting in Istanbul, Erdogan told Zelenskiy that Turkey attaches great importance to maritime safety in the Black Sea and that the security of energy supplies is crucial, the presidency said.
Last week, a marine drone struck a crude oil tanker that had departed Russia, causing an explosion in the Black Sea near Istanbul’s Bosphorus strait, drawing condemnation from Turkey. It was one of several incidents in recent months involving Western-sanctioned vessels heading to or from Russian ports in the Black Sea.
Ukraine has recently signed security co-operation agreements with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, and says it is in talks with several other Middle Eastern states about similar arrangements.
After the outbreak of war in the Middle East, Ukraine has sought to leverage its counter-drone experience acquired during its four-year-long war against Russia.
Moscow has long deployed Iranian-designed drones to strike Ukraine since its February 2022 invasion.
Zelenskiy’s spokesman told reporters that Zelenskiy would meet Patriarch Bartholomew, the most senior cleric in the Orthodox Church.
(Reporting by Daren Butler and Max Hunder;Editing by Alison Williams and Toby Chopra)
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