Erdogan to visit Ukraine, meet with Zelenskyy, Guterres

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will visit the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Thursday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Turkish state media said. 

Erdogan and Zelenskyy will hold a meeting separately and discuss the relations “in all its bearings between the two strategic partners” Turkey’s communication directory said. 

Then the two leaders will come together with UN Secretary General Guterres in a trilateral meeting for talks over the grain exports from Ukraine along with finding a political solution to the conflict with Russia.

Ukraine's grain exports were cut since the start of war because of Russia’s blockade of its Black Sea ports, driving up global food prices and sparking fears of shortages in Africa and the Middle East.

But after months of diplomatic efforts by the United Nations and Turkey, a crucial deal between Russia and Ukraine was signed last month to resume grain exports from the Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny ports.

The United Nations and Turkey opened a joint coordination center in Istanbul with the two warring countries to regulate the delivery of the grain via Black Sea.

Ukraine will be able to export 3 million tonnes of grain from its ports in September and in the future may be able to export 4 million tonnes from them monthly, Ukraine Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuriy Vaskov said on Tuesday.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that the leaders Guterres will also discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with Zelenskyy. 

Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations over a series of strikes this month on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine -- Europe's largest.