The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is his Turkish counterpart and the United Nations chief Antonio Guterres have been billed to meet in Ukraine on Thursday, the United Nations has announced.
Guterres will on Friday also get to visit the Ukrainian port city of Odessa — which is one of three ports which is being used in the recent deal between the warring countries of Russia and Ukraine to export grain from the war-ravaged country — before heading to Turkey.
Read Also: US Prepares Fresh $1bn Weapons Package For Ukraine
The first UN-chartered vessel which had been laden with grain had left Ukraine on Tuesday for Africa following the hallmark deal brokered by Turkey and the UN to relieve the global food crisis. The vessel had also departed from the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi and will sail to Djibouti for delivery to Ethiopia, Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry said.
Ukraine has said it is hoping two or three similar shipments will follow soon.
Ukraine and Russia, two of the world’s biggest grain exporters, agreed a deal brokered by the UN and Turkey last month to unblock Black Sea grain deliveries after Russia’s invasion.
“At the invitation of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the secretary-general will be in Lviv on Thursday to attend a trilateral meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the Ukrainian leader,” Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a press briefing Tuesday in New York.
“The secretary-general will then go on to Odessa the next day where he will visit the port which is one of the three being used as part of the Black Sea grain initiative.”
At talks, the leaders will discuss “the need for a political solution to this conflict,” Dujarric said, adding “I have no doubt that the issue of the nuclear power plant” will be raised.
Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations over a series of strikes this month on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine — Europe’s largest.
