Turkey believes a ceasefire must first be secured between Russia and Ukraine before it and other states take any decisions on a peacekeeping mission as part of security guarantees for Ukraine, a defence ministry source said on Thursday.

Erdogan also told Putin he was closely following developments related to the process, and that Turkey had strived for a just peace since the beginning of the war, it said.

Political messages don’t get much blunter than the Russian missiles that slammed into an American-owned manufacturing firm overnight Wednesday in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles away from the frontline trenches of a war with no end in sight.