Dear Mr. President, dear members of our teams from Ukraine and Türkiye, all those present, dear journalists!
Today, we have a very important visit, a very important meeting, and important talks covering many aspects, and, as always with President Erdoğan, the discussion was very substantive. I’m grateful to the President for our clear and substantive cooperation and for Türkiye’s readiness to support all promising ideas that can bring us closer to real peace and security.
It’s symbolic that our meeting is taking place on International Black Sea Day, and a significant part of our discussion focused specifically on issues concerning the Black Sea – this shared security space that we have with Türkiye and our other neighbors in the region. Since 2014, Russia has been making the situation in the Black Sea more difficult and worse, step by step, through its aggression. Türkiye consistently supports our sovereignty, our territorial integrity, and our efforts to ensure safe shipping in the Black Sea and restore normal living conditions across the Black Sea region. President Erdoğan and I discussed some ideas and proposals that can help. And I thank the President personally for this dialogue. This includes food security, first of all, and today President Erdoğan and I agreed to work on a Black Sea grain corridor – to ensure that the corridor exists and operates effectively.
We are now preparing for a trilateral format – Ukraine, the United States, and Russia – in the first half of November. President Erdoğan and I discussed the prospects for this format and other possibilities, including ways to involve Türkiye, Europe, and all our partners, as well as the possibility of holding meetings here in Türkiye. Strong decisions are needed to bring peace. At every level, Russia must be sent signals that there is no alternative to peace and that support for Ukraine will continue. This is all the more important given that a humanitarian operation took place in Oleshky, in the Kherson region, over the past few days. I thank President Erdoğan for his words of support. And this operation clearly demonstrates that de-escalation steps are possible when Russia is the one put in a position where it has to take these steps.
Today, we also had a very substantive discussion about our bilateral cooperation with Türkiye. Our countries are natural allies in many areas, including defense and defense production, and industry, and this cooperation will only grow. I’m sure of that. We are preparing joint industrial and other economic projects.
The Free Trade Agreement between our countries has entered into force, as President Erdoğan has already mentioned, opening up truly new opportunities for Ukrainian and Turkish businesses. Of course, progress in ensuring freedom of navigation will only help us fully implement the Free Trade Agreement.
We have significant potential in energy and infrastructure, which we also discussed. There are projects that can strengthen both of our countries – Ukraine and Türkiye – especially now, as Russia has intensified its strikes against energy infrastructure in all our cities and villages, and every energy project with our partners matters to us.
We have already met today with representatives of Turkish energy companies, and we expect support supplies of generators and other energy equipment to increase as early as next week. There are also business-level meetings taking place here in Istanbul today. Representatives of Ukrainian businesses have come here. I’m very grateful for organizing this kind of platform for dialogue among all our partners and colleagues. We very much want all these discussions to lead to concrete action. That depends on our government teams, and I expect that what has been agreed at the presidential level will be implemented promptly.
Ukraine is grateful to Türkiye for all its support and for the fact that our security and economic cooperation continues to grow, even in a challenging situation. Thank you again.
Glory to Ukraine!
