Russia establishes permanent presence in Syria
Russia’s defence minister said on Tuesday that the country will maintain a permanent presence at two air bases on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.
“Last week, the commander-in-chief [Russian president Vladimir Putin] approved the structure and the bases in Tartous and in Hmeimim [air base]. We have begun forming a permanent presence there,” the RIA news agency quoted Sergei Shoigu as saying.
The news agency said the agreement will allow Russia to keep 11 warships at Tartous, including nuclear vessels, adding the deal will last for 49 years but could be prolonged further. As for the Hmeimim air base, it can now be used by Russia indefinitely, according to the deal.
Since 2015, Russia has used the Hmeimim and Tartous bases to provide naval and air support for the Syrian government’s battle against rebels seeking to overthrow president Bashar Al Assad.
Russia has also provided ground troops and heavy weaponry, an intervention that has helped Mr Al Assad regain considerable amounts of territory in the last two years and created a sense that his government has largely “won” the war.
Earlier this month, Mr Putin visited Syria and declared victory over ISIL, which had until this year controlled significant parts of the country. Mr Putin also said Russia would begin withdrawing some of its forces.
Meanwhile, the US military has announced an open-ended presence in the country and continues to provide support for militia forces that continue to control large parts of eastern Syria. On Monday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the US for training “terrorists” in the country.
The Syrian government’s forces, which include an array of local and non-Syrian militias, including Lebanese Hizbollah, are in the process of moving in on already-surrounded rebel pockets across the country.
In southwestern Syria, on Tuesday, media outlets aligned with the Syrian government reported gains in an area near the country’s border with Lebanon and the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. A victory there would give the government back full control of Syria’s border with Lebanon, which it has not had since 2012.
That has also stoked fears that such control will allow Hizbollah to more easily move weapons from Syria to Lebanon. Israel has launched at least a dozen strikes inside Syria in the past five years that are believed to have targeted such deliveries or stockpiles of Hizbollah weapons inside Syria.
There were conflicting reports in local media on Tuesday that rebels fighting near the town of Beit Jin had agreed to a ceasefire and that negotiations were underway to transfer rebels from Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an Al Qaeda-linked faction, to other parts of the country.
Syrian state media and other outlets aligned with the government, such as Hizbollah’s Al Manar, typically refer to the group as Jabhat Al Nusra, the moniker it used as Syria’s formal Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Similar deals earlier this year saw Jabhat Fatah Al Sham fighters transferred to Idlib province in northern Syria from other parts of the country.
Most of Idlib province is still controlled by rebels, but the area has been under siege for months. Russia and the Syrian government have already targeted the area heavily, and a ground invasion appears imminent.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said that at least 14 civilians had been killed in more than 150 aerial attacks in the southern part of Idlib on Monday. Idlib is one of three “de-escalation” zones in the country agreed to by Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria. A fourth de-escalation zone, in southern Syria, was agreed to in conjunction with the US as well. That area includes Quneitra, where Beit Jin is located.
Russia has been attempting to further guide an end to the conflict on its own terms. The most recent round of UN-backed peace talks in Geneva earlier this month provided no progress, as the Syrian government’s delegation refused to meet directly with rebel representatives.
The Russians have sponsored an ongoing series of talks outside the UN’s efforts in the Kazakh capital of Astana. Those talks have produced the de-escalation zone agreements, and the Russian government has announced it will also host talks in the Russian city of Sochi next month.
The main point of contention at peace negotiations continues to be the role of Mr Al Assad, who the rebels say must step down as president.
On Sunday, a group of rebel factions fighting under the umbrella of the “Southern Front” issued a statement rejecting the Sochi talks as meaningless and calling any rebel faction that would participate “partners” with Mr Al Assad in “shedding Syrian blood”.
But as the successive rounds of talks have come and gone, the rebels have seen their leverage in terms of what they control on the ground steadily diminish.
Rebels on the southern front said that a CIA-run programme that supplied cash and weapons to factions there formally ended this month, as did a parallel programme in the northern part of the country.
A rebel commander from the Horan Division, one of the groups that rejected the Sochi talks, said that the end of support from the US had left many of his fighters “just watching”.
“We are still hoping that the friends of the Syrian people will not abandon the Syrian cause until the Syrian revolution achieves its goals,” said Raed Al Radi, the commander. “The allies of the regime haven’t abandoned it.”
Source: Russia establishes permanent presence in Syria – The National