March 14,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Reuters"
- MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin
said Monday he was instructing his armed forces
to start pulling out of Syria, over five months
after he ordered the launch of a military
operation that shored up his ally, Syrian
President Bashar Assad.
Putin, at
a meeting in the Kremlin with his defense and
foreign ministers, said Russian military forces
in Syria had largely fulfilled their objectives
and ordered an intensification of Russia's
diplomatic efforts to broker a peace deal in the
country.
But the
Russian leader signaled Moscow would keep a
military presence: he did not give a deadline
for the completion of the withdrawal and said
Russian forces would stay on at the port of
Tartous and at the Hmeimim military airport in
Syria's Latakia province.
Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had
telephoned Assad to inform him of the Russian
decision. The move was announced on the day
United Nations-brokered talks between the
warring sides in Syria resumed in Geneva.
"The
effective work of our military created the
conditions for the start of the peace process,"
Putin said.
"I
believe that the task put before the defense
ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the
whole, been fulfilled. With the participation of
the Russian military ... the Syrian armed forces
and patriotic Syrian forces have been able to
achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight
against international terrorism and have taken
the initiative in almost all respects," Putin
said.
"I am
therefore ordering the defense minister, from
tomorrow, to start the withdrawal of the main
part of our military contingent from the Syrian
Arab Republic."