Putin to Visit Next Week 

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to discuss Syria during a visit to Tehran next Tuesday, the Kremlin said.   
It will be Putin’s second foreign trip since the start of Moscow’s armed intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24, following a trip to Central Asia at the end of June.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said three leaders—from the three guarantor states of the Astana process, designed to find a peace settlement in Syria—would hold a trilateral meeting, Reuters reported.
Russia and Iran are the key military and political backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey has provided military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other militant groups still fighting against Assad’s forces in northwest Syria.
The Kremlin had said on Monday that Putin and Erdogan, who has been mediating between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia sent its armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, would hold in-person talks soon after a phone conversation in which they discussed efforts to facilitate grain exports from Ukraine.