Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Monday. The leaders of the two states discussed the situation in Syria. Putin assured Erdogan that Turkey should not be afraid of it. A number of cooperation agreements in various fields were signed during the visit.
The Rossiiskaya Gazeta believes there many major differences in international problems between Russia and Turkey. Syria is one of such themes. Its various aspects have been considered, including the humanitarian one. "By the estimates of what is happening in Syria, our positions coincide, on the whole," the Russian president explained at a news conference. However, the parties have not yet found a common approach to the methods of settlement, but fresh ideas were voiced during the talks, he went on to say, adding that the foreign ministers would hold additional consultations.
"We're not the lawyers for the Syrian leadership's actions; we are concerned with other things, namely what will happen in the future. We don't want the recurrence of the mistakes made in the recent past," he said reminding about how the West had actively supported the Libyan insurgents. Who would have imagined that these people would bring the situation to tragedy and the murder of the U.S. envoy, Vladimir Putin said noting that before making your move you have to consider the consequences.
"Do we guarantee that Syria will not attack Turkey?" the president asked again, "we are not the guarantors of the situation in the region."
However, the Russian leader calmed the audience saying, Syria was too busy to attack its neighbors: "they cannot have it out between themselves" He is confident that the shelling of the Turkish territory had been purely accidental.
The deployment of NATO's Patriot systems was another theme the parties discussed. "The Patriot system is not the best in the world; it's already an old generation," Vladimir Putin said. He shared Turkey’s concerns in connection with the situation on the border, but called urged it to show restraint. Otherwise, the situation will grow even worse. If there is a gun hanging on the wall at the beginning of the play, it will surely fire. "We don't need extra shooting on the border," the Russian president cautioned.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda underlines that Russia and Turkey signed 11 documents, including the memorandum of cooperation between the Savings Banks and Turkey’s Export-Import Bank. Under the document, the banks will allocate one billion dollars to support Russian-Turkey trade flows in the course of three years. The parties also signed a memorandum of intentions in the joint struggle against the criminally derived funds and a medium-term economic cooperation program of the two states.
After two months of work at his residence in the Moscow Region, Putin seems to have set an objective to deny all the versions alleging his health problems, which appeared every time he postponed his visit to a foreign country – Turkmenistan, India, and Pakistan – "in view of the necessity to finalize the agenda," the Moskovsky Komsomolets writes. Because even a very healthy person may be unable to keep to this schedule of trips.
Putin will fly every weekday, including the weekend, mostly to Russian towns /sometimes to two towns a day/; aside from the visit to Turkey, another foreign trip he will make will be to Ashgabat for the summit of CIS heads.