The Kremlin has said its focus in Syria is destroying Islamic State, and that it is up to the Syrian people to decide what to do about Assad.
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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on the war using a network of sources on the ground, said Syrian government forces had recently started using new weapons that included guided air-to-surface missiles.
In the afterglow of the Iran nuclear deal, which was hailed by the Obama administration as the kind of diplomacy that can be achieved when Russian Federation and the United States cooperate, USA officials had hoped for a change in Russia’s position about Syria.
“Obviously, there a questions about that, ” he said.
Syrian Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Thursday said Syria would ask Russian Federation to send its troops to fight on the side of the Syrian army if such a need arose.
But Russian Federation supports the government of President Bashar al-Assad inSyria, while the United States says Moscow’s increased military presence in Syria is exacerbating violence.
High-level military-to-military cooperation between the United States and Russian Federation continues to be suspended over the Ukrainian conflict, US State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner told journalists on Friday.
“They talked about a broad range of issues in Syria, including the most immediate issue of deconfliction”, the official said, adding that they talked about restarting the U.S.-Russia military relationship, after that was suspended when Moscow invaded Ukraine in March 2014.
The U.S. and a number of its allies are flying strike missions into Syrian air space and they don’t want to have any misunderstandings with Russia’s forces there.
He also reiterated to Lavrov the U.S. “commitment” to create a coalition of more than 60 countries to combat the Islamic State, a coalition of which he said Assad could never be a credible member.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has provided vital support to Assad throughout a popular uprising against his regime and as the conflict has metastasized into a brutal civil war that has killed 240,000 people and displaced four million. American officials told the newspaper on Sunday that the destination of the Russian aircraft was an airfield in Syria’s western province of Latakia.
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“The assertion that Moscow’s support negatively impacts the situation in Syria – and the flow of refugees in particular – is not true”.
