MOSCOW – Russia and Turkey are interested to land a possible deal onfighter jets, Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said on Friday.
He recalled that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally examinedlatest Russian technologies at the International Aviation and Space SalonMAKS-2019 on Aug. 27, including fifth generation fighter jets Su-57 and 4++generation fighter jets Su-35.
“These talks relate to an extremely sensitive topic, so it is premature totalk about it now. Many people observed Erdogan’s stay in Zhukovsky, whathe looked at, what we showed. Both the Turkish side and our side haveinterest in this,” Ushakov told reporters in Moscow, adding that anotherRussian-Turkish contract on the delivery of the S-400 air defense systemsis close to completion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is heading to Ankara on Monday to attend atrilateral summit on Syria.
Bilateral meetings are also expected on the occasion, Ushakov said, wheremilitary cooperation is an agenda for the meeting between Erdogan and Putin.
“At the bilateral meeting, the leaders, in addition to Syria, will discusssome important questions of the implementation of the agreements that werereached in Moscow and cooperation in the military-technical domain,” hesaid.
With Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, Putin will discuss the establishmentof an alternative payment to SWIFT. The issue is gaining momentum asRussian oil companies show interest in Iranian oilfield development.
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He added that the trilateral summit could pave way for a quadrilateralsummit with participation of Turkey, Russia, Germany and France.
Turkey, Russia, and Iran are the guarantor countries that brokered acease-fire in Syria in December 2016, leading to the Astana, Kazakhstantalks, which are running parallel to the Geneva peace talks.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when theAssad regime cracked down on protesters with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have beenkilled and millions more displaced by the conflict. -AA
