KIEV: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday in Kiev to boost trade between their countries.
Zelensky greeted Erdogan with a handshake at the Mariyinsky Palace, with an honour guard present and a band playing the national anthems of both countries.
Erdogan approached a microphone at the assembly and said, in Ukrainian, “Glory to Ukraine!”
Erdogan and Zelensky, who last met in August in Ankara, were to conduct bilateral talks to “enhance strategic partnership and cooperation in all areas of interaction,” and attend a Ukraine-Turkey business forum, according to Zelensky’s office.
Zelensky, a career actor and relative newcomer to politics, was inaugurated last year on promises to root out entrenched corruption and improve Ukraine’s struggling economy.
Zelensky has also set out to end a years-long conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border, a conflict that Ukraine says Russia is fuelling.
Erdogan, who has been strengthening ties with Russia in recent years, has also adamantly opposed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s southern Crimea region, particularly speaking up for the rights of the Crimean Tatars, an ethnic Turkic minority. — dpa
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