She urged Russian Federation “to focus its efforts on ISIL (one other acronym for the Islamic State militant group) and to use its affect with the Assad regime to help a real political transition” in Syria.
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With Russia’s bombing of Islamic State targets in Syria entering its second month and Iran’s rapprochement with the West after a landmark nuclear deal between the two sides in July, both Moscow and Teheran are poised to play a bigger role in the Syria crisis.
And, tellingly, they come days after the temporary halt of peace talks in Vienna, Austria, that featured representatives from at least 18 interested parties.
Maria Zakhrova, the Russian spokeswoman, clearly stated that it was neither Russia’s agenda nor priority to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad nor see to it that he remains in power.
“Assad’s visit to Moscow and meeting with Putin was historic”, Mehr News Agency quoted his as saying at a meeting with Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani.
But another regime change in the Middle East could be a catastrophe that “could simply turn the whole region into a large black hole”, she added. “IS” fighters had seized it 12 days ago, cutting off government-held areas of what was once Syria’s most populated city from the rest of the country. Although the USA government has said that Mr Assad can have no part in Syria’s ruling after the war, Russian Federation claims to have no interest or inclination to act in the matter. We say: We do not intervene.
Russian Federation offered on Tuesday to host a meeting between representatives of the Syrian government and rebel groups in Moscow next week, and said it had given Saudi Arabia and the USA a list of the opposition figures with whom it was working.
Russian Federation has stepped up its military support for the embattled president in the past two months, deploying warplanes to Syria and carrying out airstrikes.
On Saturday the SDF announced it was launching an offensive to liberate al-Hasakah province of IS militants, saying it was “the first step of our military action within a plan of liberating the whole [of] Syria from the terrorist gangs”.
“They are fixed in the Geneva communiqué, the United Nations Security Council documents and the Vienna statement of the Contact Group for Syria adopted on October 30, 2015”.
Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, said Moscow has failed to exact any humanitarian concessions from Assad as a price for Russian support.
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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the journalist was killed in shelling of the government-held Dahiyat al-Assad neighborhood, which has been frequently targeted by rebel attacks.
