Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will discuss a new mechanism for allowing the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during his upcoming visit to Turkey, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Sunday, Reuters reported.

Putin is expected to visit Turkey on February 12 to meet with Erdogan, a Turkish official previously said, marking the Russian leader’s first trip to a NATO country since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

There are attempts to find “new methods” of transporting Ukrainian grain to world markets, Fidan said in an interview with the private TV channel A Haber.

“The previous grain agreement worked under a certain mechanism, now we saw that there is an opportunity to follow another mechanism, and now there are efforts to materialize this opportunity,” Fidan said, adding that Erdogan would raise the issue in his meeting with Putin in Turkey .

Ankara tried to convince Russia to return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, from which Moscow withdrew in July 2023, a year after its implementation. The agreement was concluded through the mediation of the UN and Turkey to ensure the safe passage of exports from Ukrainian ports.

Kyiv has said that negotiations are underway to revive the agreement, but Moscow has said that there is no way to renew it.

Fidan noted that some ships managed to transport Ukrainian grain to the Black Sea even without an agreement.

“We want to clarify this situation with a new mechanism,” he said