The first major truce in the five-year civil war began at midnight (2200UTC) in Syria on Friday night.
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On the stroke of midnight, guns fell silent in the Damascus suburbs and the devastated northern city of Aleppo, AFP correspondents said.
The agreement excludes the Islamic State and forces of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate whose fighters are interwoven with opposition groups in the Syrian northwest around Aleppo.
Al-Nusra’s chief Mohammad al-Jolani on Friday urged President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents to reject the ceasefire and instead intensify attacks on the regime.
Noting that Moscow has fully abided by its commitments to the ceasefire since it came into effect, Rudskoi said his country is using multiple means of intelligence devices, including drones and satellites, to monitor the ceasefire on a daily basis.
In second city Aleppo, two people were killed and four wounded when shells hit the majority-Kurdish neighbourhood of Sheikh Maqsud, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said. The militant Sunni Islamist faction views the cease-fire as a ploy aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement to the conflict that will allow Assad’s secular government to remain in power.
Putin added that the operations carried out by Russian aircraft, government forces and worldwide coalition forces in Syria will not target groups that join the ceasefire.
“During consultations we received a similar map prepared by the American side”, Rudskoi said.
“Let’s pray that this works because frankly this is the best opportunity we can imagine the Syrian people has had for the last five years in order to see something better and hopefully something related to peace”, he said at a news conference in Geneva just as the ceasefire began. The extremist group, along with al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, is not party to the cease-fire, which went into effect at midnight.
The temporary and partial truce seems to have stopped fighting in most parts of western Syria, although Syria’s state news agency said a auto bomb had exploded on the edge of a government-held central town of Salamiyeh, killing two and wounding several others.
That is the goal of the peace talks, which have as their aim the creation of a transitional government that will pave the way for a full end to the hostilities and a long-term solution.
He said this was being done to rule out “any possible bombing mistakes” and in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution. The Syrian opposition’s umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee, said in a statement that 97 groups promised to take part in the cease-fire.
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the agreement could be “a turning point” in the war, even as Russian planes launched a wave of attacks on non-jihadist rebel areas.
In the northern province of Raqqa, Isil fighters stormed the border town of Tal Abyad and the nearby village of Suluk that were captured months ago by Kurdish fighters, according to a Syrian rebel official.
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This was the first attempt by the global community to bring about a cease-fire since a U.N.-led effort in 2012 collapsed within hours, and expectations were low that this one would succeed.
