ANKARA, February 15. /TASS/. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has asserted that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was sincere when he talked about the fate of the Istanbul talks on the Ukrainian crisis.

According to TRT, returning from Egypt, Erdogan told journalists onboard the plane: "To be honest, there is sincerity in these statements by Mr. Putin. During meetings within the framework of the Istanbul process, we took various sincere steps. Ministers held meetings with the Russian side. We worked toward a result but did not manage to establish peace. We cannot drop this simply because we could not achieve any results then. We will not abandon the aspiration to peace and will continue to do everything possible to ensure peace."

The Turkish leader added that he "worked together [with Russia] and continued to try until ex-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson rejected peace efforts." "Recently, we were visited by UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and we discussed these issues with him. If Mr. Putin holds a one-on-one exchange of opinions with us or if relevant officials from Russia arrive, we will conduct this process with them and try to achieve results," he noted.

Erdogan stated that he continues to talk both with Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in order to peacefully resolve the situation in Ukraine. "We can again try and open the door to peace [in the context of the Ukrainian conflict] managing result-oriented processes free from external influence. We continue this quest while interacting both with Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky. From the very beginning, we have been stressing that a just peace is better than war and aspire to take all our steps with this in mind. If we want peace, we will definitely find a way to achieve it," he said.

Putin mentioned the disrupted talks on Ukraine in Istanbul in 2022 during his interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson. The Russian leader asserted that Russia had never rejected dialogue on Ukraine but after the Istanbul talks stopped Moscow would never take the first step. That said, the terms for a settlement can be discussed. According to Putin, "this is the subject of talks that nobody wants to hold with Russia or, rather, they want to but don’t know how." As for why London undermined the Istanbul talks, Putin said that "he neither knew nor understood," apparently, "there was a general policy" and "everyone had an illusion that Russia could be conquered on the battlefield."