ANKARA, March 1. /TASS/: Turkish and Russian Foreign Ministers, Mevlut Cavusoglu and Sergey Lavorv, on Sunday had telephone talks ahead of a meeting between the two presidents, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia, a source in the Turkish foreign ministry told TASS.
"Our minister had talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. They discussed [various] topics ahead of a meeting between the leaders [of the two nations]," he said.
Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday said on Saturday that Putin and Erdogan could meet in Moscow on March 5 or 6. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed that preparations were underway to organize the two leaders’ meeting on these dates. He did not say however where these meeting would take place.
The situation around Syria’s Idlib governorate aggravated again overnight to February 28, when, according to the Turkish side, 36 Turkish soldiers were killed in an attack by Syrian government forces. Following this incident, the Turkish forces delivered strikes at the positions of the Syrian army, hitting more than 200 targets.
Meanwhile, the Russian defense ministry said that on February 27 militants of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (also known as Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia) had attempted a large-scale offensive in Idlib. The Turkish soldier who came under shelling by Syrian troops were among the attacking militants, the Russian ministry said. It vowed that Russian warplanes had made no sorties in that area.
