Leaders From Russia And Turkey To Meet

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Vladimir Putin in a bid to persuade the Russian leader to rejoin the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow broke off from in July. Monday’s meeting in Sochi on Russia’s southern coast comes after weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet. The Kremlin refused to renew the grain agreement six weeks ago. The deal was brokered by the United Nations and Ankara in July 2022. It had allowed nearly 33 million metric tons of grain and other commodities to leave three Ukrainian ports safely despite the war. Russia pulled out after claiming that a parallel deal promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer had not been honored.