|
 The images, broadcast on the Rossiya 24 TV station, showed
personnel loading equipment and boxes onto Ilyushin Il-76 heavy lift
transport aircraft at Russia's Hmeymim air base in Latakia province.
The Kremlin has used the base, which Putin said Russia would keep
along with a naval facility at Tartous, to mount a 5-month campaign
of air strikes to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an
intervention that has tipped the balance of power in the Syrian
leader's favor.
Putin announced on Monday that "the main part" of Russian armed
forces in Syria would start to withdraw, telling his diplomats to
step up the push for peace as U.N.-mediated talks resumed on ending
the five-year-old war.
 The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that
technical staff had begun preparing aircraft to fly back to their
bases in Russia in line with Putin's orders. Russia has maintained a
strike force at the Hmeymim base of at least 50 aircraft and
helicopters.
"The personnel are loading equipment, logistics items and stock onto
transport aircraft," the ministry said.
"Aircraft from the Hmeymim base will fly back to the airfields where
they are permanently based on Russian territory accompanied by
military transport aircraft."
[to top of second column] |
It said the planes would break their journey home of more than 5,000
kilometers (3106.86 miles)to refuel at intermediary bases inside
Russia.
A weather forecaster on Rossiya 24 said their precise flight paths
home were secret, and that it was only possible to talk of the "most
convenient routes" transiting Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn/Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Christian
Lowe)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
