The Moscow Times: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Saturday for a peaceful resolution of Ukraine’s tensions with Russia based on respect of its territorial integrity. Flanked by his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul that Turkey aims “to ensure the Black Sea remains a sea of peace and cooperation” as U.S. warships were due to sail through Turkey’s Bosphorus. “We don’t want an increase in tensions in our common region,” Erdogan said. “We believe that the current crisis must be settled by peaceful means on the basis of international law and respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” the Turkish leader added.
The Moscow Times: The Kremlin on Sunday said it was not moving toward war with Ukraine as Russia increased its military presence on the border with Ukraine’s eastern breakaway territories. In recent weeks fighting has intensified between Ukraine’s army and pro-Russian separatists controlling two regions in the country’s east, raising concerns of major escalation in the long-running conflict. “Of course, nobody is planning to move toward war and in general, nobody accepts the possibility of such a war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a televised interview on Sunday. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman added that “nobody also accepts the possibility of civil war in Ukraine.”
