The situation in Greek-Turkishbut also the coordination of allies in matters that arise and concern him war in Ukraine they will be, among other things, the subject of discussion in the planned contacts that he will have today in Brusselson the sidelines of the NATO ministerial meeting, Minister of National Defense Nikos Panagiotopoulos. Over the past 24 hours, there have been many rumors, mainly from Turkish sources and the media, regarding a possible meeting between Mr. Panayotopoulos and his Turkish counterpart. Hulusi Akar. Although a social quartet of two ministers on the sidelines is not ruled out, Mr. Panagiotopoulos’ program does not include a bilateral meeting with Mr. Akar.

On the sidelines of the NATO ministerial meeting, N. Panagiotopoulos will meet with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and yesterday he spoke with Jens Stoltenberg.

Yesterday the Minister of National Defense met with the Minister of Defense. NATO Jens Stoltenberg, which, despite the equal distance rhetoric he usually espouses on the Greek-Turkish issue, is at the same time a useful channel of communication with Ankara. Mr. Stoltenberg believes that the disengagement mechanism, established in the summer of 2020 during the Oruc Reis crisis, is a useful tool to overcome Greek-Turkish tensions within NATO.

Today, Mr. Panagiotopoulos will also meet with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was reminded that in addition to purely Greek-American issues, he has voluntarily taken the initiative to discuss Greek-Turkish tensions with his Turkish counterpart as well. Mr. Panagiotopoulos will also meet with his colleagues from Germany, Christine Lambrecht and France, Sebastien Lecourt. With their German counterpart, they will also discuss the issue of a circular exchange of Marders with BMP-1s of the Greek army, which will go to Ukraine in the coming days in order to strengthen the internal forces of the territorial defense of Kyiv. . Initially, the first 20 BMP-1s located in Thessaloniki will be transported by road to Ukraine.