More Russian military police arrive in Syria under peace deal with Turkey

[October 25, 2019]  By Andrey Kuzmin and Tuvan Gumrukcu

MOSCOW/ANKARA (Reuters) - Around 300 more Russian military police have arrived in Syria, the Russian defense ministry said on Friday, under an accord between Ankara and Moscow which halted Turkey's military incursion into northeast Syria.

The deal, reached on Tuesday by Presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, requires that Russian military police and Syrian border guards remove all Kurdish YPG militia from within 30 km (19 miles) of the Turkish border by next Tuesday.

The military police, from the southern Russian region of Chechnya, will patrol and help with the withdrawal of Kurdish forces and their weapons to 30 km of the Syrian-Turkish border, Interfax news agency reported the ministry as saying.

Ankara regards the YPG as a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish militants who have waged an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984.

Turkey launched its offensive against the YPG on Oct. 9 after President Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces out of northeast Syria. It halted its assault under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that called for a YPG withdrawal from the border area. The Putin-Erdogan deal built on and widened that agreement.

Russia said on Thursday the peace plan was being implemented smoothly and RIA news agency quoted an SDF official as saying Kurdish fighters had already withdrawn from the border area.

However, the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) accused Turkey of launching a large land offensive on Thursday targeting three villages in northeast Syria despite the truce, forcing thousands more civilians to flee.

Turkey's Defense Ministry has not commented directly on the SDF report but said five of its military personnel had been wounded in an attack by the YPG militia around the border town of Ras al Ain, near where the three villages are located.

CEASEFIRE HOLDING "BY AND LARGE"

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told Reuters the ceasefire seemed to be holding "by and large" as major powers gather in Geneva ahead of the first meeting of Syria's Constitutional Committee next week.

On Friday Pedersen was holding talks with senior officials from Arab and Western countries ahead of the committee meeting.

James Jeffrey, U.S. special representative for Syria, is among the envoys who began closed-door talks in the Swiss city, diplomats said. The so-called "Small Group" also includes Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Russian and Syrian national flags flutter on military vehicles near Manbij, Syria, October 15, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki/File Photo

A diplomat told Reuters that Germany's proposal for a security zone in northeast Syria would be among issues discussed.

Turkey's Defense Minister Hulusi Akar discussed the Syria situation with his U.S. counterpart Mark Esper at a NATO meeting in Brussels on Friday, the Turkish defense ministry said. No details of their talks were immediately available.

Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said Ankara had formally asked Washington to detain and extradite SDF commander Mazloum Kobani when he enters the United States.

In a move criticized by Ankara, U.S. senators have asked the State Department to swiftly provide a U.S. visa for Kobani, whose SDF was a key American ally against Islamic State militants in Syria.

Ankara says Kobani was a senior leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

Turkey hosts some 3.6 million refugees who fled the eight-year-old war in Syria and plans to settle up to two million refugees in a "safe zone" on the Syrian side of the border.

An Amnesty International report published on Friday said Turkey was forcibly sending refugees back to Syria. Ankara denies sending any Syrians back against their will.

Next Tuesday, under the terms of the deal reached by Erdogan and Putin, Russian and Turkish forces will start to patrol a 10-km strip of land in northeast Syria where U.S. troops had been deployed for years alongside their former Kurdish allies.

The arrival of the Russian police marks a shift in the regional balance of power just two weeks after Trump began pulling out U.S. forces. It has also highlighted a growing security relationship between Russia, now the dominant power inside Syria, and NATO member Turkey.

Turkey's military operation has been widely condemned by its NATO allies, which said it was causing a fresh humanitarian crisis in Syria's eight-year conflict and could let Islamic State prisoners held by the YPG escape and regroup.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Andrey Kuzmin in Moscow, Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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