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Turkey is committed to seeking a peace dialog between Russia and Ukraine, Turkish media cited President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying on Saturday.
State broadcaster TRT and other media quoted Erdogan as saying: "The West, and especially the U.S., is attacking Russia seemingly endlessly," without elaborating on what he meant, Reuters reported.
"Of course, Russia is displaying great resistance in the face of all this," Erdogan was quoted as telling reporters on a flight from Uzbekistan.
"We are working on how to create a peace corridor here, like we had the grain corridor. We think the best way for this is a path from dialog to peace," Erdogan said, adding Ukraine's view would be important.
NATO member Turkey hosted talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations earlier this year, and has sought to balance its criticism of the invasion and opposition to the sanctions.
The Russian-appointed governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, said Saturday there is no need to evacuate residents from his area, CNN reported.
"Our borders have long been securely protected. Unfounded rumors spread by enemy propaganda are deliberately trying to sow panic and destabilize the situation," said Balitsky on his Telegram channel.
"You must understand that the evacuation of the population of the west bank in Kherson region took place according to plan, including the evacuation of cultural heritage monuments. These are strategically necessary steps to conduct a full-scale operation in which civilians and cultural heritage sites should not suffer," he added.
Zaporizhzhia is in southern Ukraine, northeast of Kherson along the Dnipro River.
Ukraine's Military Intelligence said Saturday that Moscow and Tehran are preparing the draft agreement on the supply of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia, the .
Russia's shortage of modern weapons because of Western sanctions is pushing Moscow to purchase weapons from world pariahs, according to Vadym Skibitskyi, a representative of the Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate.
"This summer Russia signed a contract with Iran to supply about 1,750 drones of two types, Shahed and Mohajer. The first batch, which was delivered to Russia, was about 350 drones, the second was about 250,” he said.
Cyprus on Saturday buried Archbishop Chrysostomos II, a trailblazer who butted heads with his peers to keep Russian influence in the Orthodox Church at bay and led the biggest ecclesiastical reforms in centuries, Reuters reported.
Chrysostomos died on November 7 from cancer at age 81.
He had led the Church of Cyprus, one of the world's oldest churches, since 2006.
Four of the world's 15 Eastern Orthodox self-governing churches have recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, away from the sphere of Moscow's influence.
The Church of Cyprus recognized it in 2020, with Chrysostomos standing firm against senior clerics in his church ruling body, the Holy Synod, seen as pro-Moscow.
He also opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russian fertilizer producer Uralchem-Uralkali has agreed with the Netherlands, Estonia and Belgium to supply cargoes of fertilizers stranded in those countries to Africa, TASS news agency reported on Saturday, according to Reuters.
It cited Uralchem's head Dmitry Konyaev as saying the group was working with the U.N. to organize free deliveries to Africa of more than 262,000 metric tons of fertilizers stuck in EU countries."
The Netherlands said on Friday that following a request from the United Nations it would allow shipment to Malawi of 20,000 metric tons of Russian fertilizer that had been sitting in the port of Rotterdam because of sanctions against a Russian individual, whom it did not identify.
It said a condition of the agreement was that the sanctioned person and the Russian company would earn nothing from the transaction.
President of the European Council Charles Michel said Saturday the bloc expected China to use "all the means at its disposal" to push Moscow to respect international law, days before a G-20 summit expected to be dominated by the conflict in Ukraine.
Michel was speaking on the sidelines of a regional summit in Cambodia, where Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged Southeast Asian leaders to support Kyiv, Agence France-Presse reported.
While China remains a major trading partner of the European Union, officials have repeatedly called on Beijing to publicly condemn Russia's actions, without success so far.
China has avoided criticizing Moscow for invading Ukraine, instead blaming the United States and NATO for the war.