Putin, in a surprise move on Monday, announced the main part of Russian forces in Syria would start to withdraw.
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Kommersant newspaper also called it a victory, but said helping Mr Assad to win back all of his war-ravaged country could have taken years, with “no guarantees whatsoever that this would have worked out”.
The UN’s new refugee commissioner Filippo Grandi said he would ask the worldwide community to take in another 400,000 Syrian refugees as the country’s neighbours struggle to cope with the exodus.
United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura described the pullout as a “significant development” for the negotiations that began in Geneva on Monday in the latest push to end the brutal conflict as it enters its sixth year.
Syria’s state news agency also quoted Assad as saying that the Russian military will draw down its air force contingent but won’t leave the country altogether.
Personnel will remain at Hemeimeem and Russia’s long-established Mediterranean naval base at Tartus, and Russian reconnaissance missions against Isis and the Nusra Front will continue.
Su-34 bombers are among jets that have left the Hemeimeem air base in Syria and troops are “loading equipment, logistics items and inventory into transport” planes, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday on Twitter.
Pro-Kremlin observers hailed the five-and-a-half-month aerial campaign in Syria which they said helped Putin break out of global isolation over Ukraine and assert Russia’s interests in the Middle East. Accompanying this announcement was Putin’s assessment that the military intervention had successfully achieved most of the goals; hence the time was right to pull out.
“We are ready in the next stage to go in direct negotiations with the regime”, said the spokesman for the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), Salem al-Meslet.
Syrian opposition negotiators have demanded that Syria’s government detail its thoughts on a political transition and say there has been no progress on freeing detainees who it said were being executed at a rate of 50 a day.
In the meantime, Washington should follow Russia’s lead and pressure its own proxy forces to shift towards diplomacy.
Kerry plans to travel to Moscow next week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and to discuss how to move the political process on Syria forward.
Ja’afari rejected talk of a federal model for Syria, in response to a move by Syrian Kurds to announce a federal structure of government in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria.
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But the Syrian government, which had been losing ground to rebels before Russian Federation intervened, had indicated it was no mood to compromise on the eve of the talks, calling the presidency a “red line” and ruling out a negotiated transfer of power. Accordingly, what happens next will be more interesting, especially with the large number of statements trying to interpret the partial withdrawal if it is ratified.
