Putin Hosts Assad in Moscow, Tells Other Forces to Leave Syria
Putin Hosts Assad in Moscow, Tells Other Forces to Leave Syria
(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad in the Kremlin Monday, backing the Syrian leader’s efforts to eliminate the last enclaves of rebels backed by the U.S. and Turkey.
Under Western sanctions and ostracized by the Arab League after a decade-long civil war, Assad has maintained strong ties with Russia, which sent planes and troops to back his government in 2015.
The intervention helped turn the tide of the war against disparate rebel groups that had succeeded in capturing swathes of the country. Those fighters are now cornered in the province of Idlib, near the border with Turkey, which deployed troops to prevent the bastions falling to Assad.
A small contingent of U.S. forces remains in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, keeping much of Syria’s oil resources out of Damascus’s hands.
In the meeting, Putin called the continued presence of foreign troops not authorized by the Assad government Syria’s “main problem.” Russia has repeatedly called on the U.S. and Turkey to withdraw their forces.
“Our joint efforts have liberated the main, overwhelming territory of the Syrian Republic,” putting 90% of the country under the control of government troops, Putin said, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin website early Tuesday. The visit represents a rare foreign trip for the isolated Syrian leader.
Syria’s war deepened fault lines in the Middle East as Iran, Russia, Turkey and Gulf Arab states lined up on different sides of a conflict that drove millions of refugees to the region and Europe. Moscow has also sought to push Arab countries to rebuild their ties with Assad in an effort to imbue him with regional legitimacy and to check the influence of Iran, Assad’s other major supporter.
Syria’s state news agency said the two leaders discussed the need to “complete” efforts to reach an agreement among Syrians without foreign intervention during an “extended summit” in which they were joined by their foreign ministers.
The Kremlin is hoping that the U.S. pull-out from Afghanistan and Washington’s need for anti-terrorism cooperation may bolster the chances of some arrangement over Syria, said Moscow-based Middle East expert Elena Suponina.
“The goal now is to try and increase Assad’s control of Syria,” Suponina said by phone. Removing Turkey’s presence appears unlikely for now, she said.
In power since 2000, Assad has emerged triumphant from the country’s bruising civil war, winning a fourth seven-year term as president in May, in elections dismissed by the U.S. and European nations as a sham. In the meeting Monday, Putin congratulated him on his victory.
Assad and Putin speak regularly and Putin last visited Syria in January 2020.
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