Turkey’s offer to evacuate by sea the wounded fighters holed up in a steelworks in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol is still on the table, Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın said on Saturday.
Kalın told Reuters in an interview that he had personally discussed the proposal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv two weeks ago and that it remains valid although Moscow has not agreed to it.
Under the plan, people evacuated from the vast Azovstal steel plant would be taken by land to the port of Berdyansk, which like Mariupol is on the Sea of Azov, and a Turkish vessel would take them across the Black Sea to Istanbul, he said.
"If it can be done that way, we are happy to do it. We are ready. In fact, our ship is ready to go and bring the injured soldiers and other civilians to Turkey," said Kalın.
Ukraine and Russia did not immediately comment on the possibility of an evacuation by sea.
After weeks of Russian siege and bombardment, Mariupol is in Russian hands, but hundreds of Ukrainian fighters are holding out under heavy fire at the steelworks.
A number of civilians who were sheltering in the plant were evacuated this month with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations. Turkey's proposal included evacuating the civilians who were still there.
Zelenskyy has said complex talks are underway to evacuate a large number of wounded soldiers from the steelworks in return for the release of Russian prisoners of war.
Russia, which initially said the fighters should surrender, has said little publicly about the talks.
Kalın said the Russian position "changes day to day."
"They look at the security situation on the ground and other dynamics, their negotiations, their own internal coordination," he said. "So sometimes it is hard to get a firm response (or) commitment from either side."
Turkey neighbors Russia and Ukraine, has good ties with both and has tried to facilitate peace talks. It objected to Russia's invasion and has supplied Kyiv with armed drones though it also opposes Western sanctions on Moscow.
Kalin said the naval evacuation from Berdyansk was one of a number of proposals to reach a cease-fire and carry out an evacuation.
"It may happen, yes. I believe it may happen," he said.
"The boat is still in Istanbul. It is ready to sail but we are waiting for final clearance from the Russian and Ukrainian sides for it to go to Berdyansk and bring those injured soldiers to Turkey," he explained.
Turkey’s delicately balanced act of assuming a role as a mediator by keeping communication channels with both warring sides open provides a glimmer of hope in diplomatic efforts to find a solution and achieve peace in the Ukraine crisis. With its unique position of having friendly relations with both Russia and Ukraine, Turkey has won widespread praise for its push to end the war.
In a breakthrough, Russian and Ukrainian delegations met for peace talks in Istanbul on March 29 as the war entered its second month with casualties piling up on both sides.
Turkey also hosted the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine in Antalya in March. Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine met in the Turkish resort town of Antalya for talks, which Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also attended.