Hours before the meeting between Putin and Erdogan began, Russia attacked the southern Odesa region with drones, damaging Ukrainian grain infrastructure.
Putin meets with Erdogan, who helped broker the Black Sea deal.
President Vladimir V. Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are holding bilateral talks in Russia on Monday, amid an international push to revive the deal that had allowed Ukraine to safely export tens of millions of tons of grain through the Black Sea.
The meeting came after talks on Thursday between the countries’ top diplomats in Moscow ended with no apparent progress in resurrecting the deal, which Russia withdrew from in July. Moscow complained that the deal was being carried out unfairly, and has since repeatedly bombarded Ukrainian grain facilities and threatened civilian ships heading to Ukrainian ports.
Those attacks continued on Monday as Russia fired drones at the southern Odesa region for the second straight day, targeting the Ukrainian side of the Danube River, which has emerged as an alternative shipping route amid Russia’s de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
