Russia to send reinforcements to Syria
The Russian Defense Ministry intends to transfer additional military police forces to Syria, RIA Novosti reports, citing a source in the Russian Defense Ministry.
"Within a week, two battalions of military police will be transferred to Syria," the source said.
According to the source, this will include 276 military policemen and 33 units of military equipment.
Plans to send additional units of Russian military police to Syria came to light after the presidents of Russia and Turkey agreed to jointly patrol a 10km area to the west and to the east of the territory affected by the Turkish Operation Peace Spring.
On October 23, Igor Seritsky, a spokesman for the Russian military command in Syria, said that the military police had begun patrolling the territories in the northeast of the country.
The Russian Defense Ministry has published a map of Syria, which shows the zones in which joint Russian-Turkish patrols will operate.
On the same day, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said that the Russian military police and Syrian border guards guarantee the safety of civilians in the 30-kilometer zone along the Syrian-Turkish border, and therefore civilians who are on this territory, do not need to leave their homes.
In February 2019, the head of the General Directorate of Russian Military Police, Lieutenant General Vladimir Ivanovsky, stated that about 60% of his subordinates had received combat experience during the operation in Syria.