Both Turkey and Finland are striving for peaceful solutions to regional and global conflicts, Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said.
In an interview published by Anadolu Agency (AA), Haavisto evaluated bilateral relations and regional issues during his visit to Turkey in which he met with Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
” Both countries seek peaceful solutions to conflicts. Minister Çavuşoğlu told us about the last visit of Turkey to Ukraine at the level of the head of state and the minister of foreign affairs. Of course, we exchanged views on the current Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he said.
Haavisto stated that it is worrying that Russia has increased its military presence on the border with Ukraine and that Russia and Belarus are holding joint military exercises.
World leaders, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are working to resolve the row peacefully. To that end, Turkey has offered to host a peace summit between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine.
Russia recently massed over 100,000 troops near Ukraine, prompting fears that the Kremlin could be planning another military offensive against its former Soviet neighbor. Moscow has denied that it is preparing to invade and said its troops are there for exercises. The Kremlin also issued a list of security demands from the West, including a rollback of troop deployments to some ex-Soviet states and guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia will not join NATO.
Ankara has previously offered to help defuse the standoff and Turkish diplomatic sources have said both Russia and Ukraine were open to the idea. Turkey has opposed the sanctions threatened by other NATO members in response to a military incursion by Russia. -Agencies
