Russian military police start patrolling Syria-Turkey border
For the first time in years, Damascus has begun to control the north-eastern border with Turkey.
On Wednesday, Russian military police began patrolling Syria’s north-eastern border as part of an agreement with Turkey to expel the Kurds from the region.
The arrival of Russian police in the Syrian border city of Kobani marks the start of Moscow and Damascus’s joint mission to keep the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at least 30 km from the Turkish border, as part of an agreement made by presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi on Tuesday.
This development demonstrates Putin’s dominant influence in Syria. For the first time in several years, Assad’s forces are starting to patrol the country’s north-eastern border.
Kobani is particularly important to the Kurds, who repelled attempts by ISIS to capture this border city during the intense fighting in 2014-15.
US President Donald Trump, announcing the successful resolution of the situation on the Syria-Turkey border on Wednesday, neglected to mention Moscow’s role in the region. However, his critics did not fail to point this out. Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen said that “Trump’s celebration of the Putin-Erdogan deal represents his total surrender of American leadership”.
Since Tuesday, Russian and Turkish forces have been jointly patrolling a 10 km strip of territory in north-eastern Syria that had been occupied by the US military and its Kurdish allies for a long time.
The commanders of the armed Kurdish groups have not yet responded to the Putin-Erdogan deal. The manner in which the Kurds will be removed from the “safe zone” remains an open question.
Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that if the Kurds do not comply, the Syrian border guards and Russian military police will have to withdraw, in which case “the remaining Kurdish groups will be at the mercy of the Turkish army”.