Vladimir Putin orders start of Russian forces' withdrawal from Syria
Russian president says soldiers should begin pulling out of country as military intervention has largely achieved its aims
Vladimir Putin announces withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria
Patrick Wintour in Geneva and Shaun Walker in Moscow-Monday 14 March 2016
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has abruptly declared that he is withdrawing the majority of Russian troops from Syria, saying the six-month military intervention had largely achieved its objective.
The news on Monday, relayed personally to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in a telephone call from Putin, followed a meeting in the Kremlin with the Russian defence and foreign ministers. He said the pullout, scaling back an intervention that began at the end of September, is due to start on Tuesday.
His move was clearly designed to coincide with the start of Syrian peace talks in Geneva and will be seen as a sign that Russia believes it has done enough to protect Assad’s regime from collapse.
Putin said he had ordered his diplomatic staff to step up their efforts to achieve a settlement to end the civil war which has cost at least 250,000 lives and is due to enter its sixth year on Tuesday.
Western diplomatic sources were both sceptical and startled by Putin’s unexpected and mercurial move.
“We will have to wait and see what this represents. It is Putin. He has announced similar concessions in the past and nothing materialised,” a diplomat at the talks in Geneva told the Guardian.
Syrian activists and rights groups have accused the Russian campaign of indiscriminate attacks and causing enormous civilian casualties, something Russian officials have repeatedly denied. Moscow has also come under fire for targeting moderate opposition groups, while claiming to be fighting Islamic State.
