Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to travel to Turkey Tuesday for a two-day visit that will showcase warming ties between the two historical foes.

The Russian leader joined his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for an Ankara ceremony to officially inaugurate Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu, in the southern Mediterranean province of Mersin. It is being built by Russia’s state Atomic Energy Agency, ROSATOM. A first reactor is slated for completion in 2023, marking the centennial of the modern republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The pair will then hold bilateral talks. And on Wednesday they will be joined by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the Turkish capital, Ankara, for a further round of negotiations to end the seven-year conflict in Syria based on the so-called Astana model devised in May 2017. It calls for a de-escalation of hostilities, the deployment of peace monitors in designated zones and though it's not formally articulated, the reconsolidation of regime control over them.

So far, the regime has repeatedly violated cease-fire arrangements envisaged by Astana and called for by the United Nations, raining bombs on civilians in eastern Ghouta, one of four de-escalation zones alongside Idlib, Homs and the rebel-controlled southern region bordering Jordan.