Russia to continue helping Syria after withdrawing main part of its troops - Kosachev

MOSCOW, March 14 /TASS/. The Geneva peace talks will determine Syria’s future after Russia withdraws the main part of its Aerospace Forces from that country. Russia will continue giving diplomatic support to the Damascus government, Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev told journalists on Monday. "It is the long-awaited news because it means only one thing - the operation has been effective and has produced a result. Time has come for gathering stones," Kosachev, who heads the Russian Federation Council (parliament’s upper house) Committee for International Affairs, said. Russia has been insisting straight from start that neither Washington and Brussels nor Moscow should decide Syria’s future fate. "Geneva will decide Syria’s future in a certain sense. With the main phase of the Russian military operation being over, the participants in the Geneva talks are assuming an immeasurably greater responsibility for their outcome," the lawmaker went on to say. "I am sure that Russia will continue helping the Syrian people by diplomatic means. It is a case when the diplomats’ ink is not going to fade because it is saturated with powder: the Russian bases will remain where they are," Kosachev said. The Russian lawmaker believes that the breakthrough in the Syrian campaign was not so much military though the military had certainly made it possible. "The breakthrough occurred when Russia and the United States managed to reach a decision on ceasefire among those who initially were not supposed to fight against each other through the efforts of their foreign ministers in Munich and later at the level of the two countries’ presidents," the Russian lawmaker went on to say. Russia had to snow a remarkable political will and demonstrate a phenomenal military might to make itself heard. "Now, they have heard us. They have understood - in Damascus, in Aleppo and in Raqqa. Hopefully, that has also been understood in Riyadh and Ankara," Kosachev added. "It was Russia who returned to the people of Syria and all the remaining healthy patriotic forces in the country a chance to save their homeland from real rather than imaginary threat of disintegration, collapse and chaos. This chance should not be missed," the head of the Federation Council Committee for International Affairs said. The Kremlin press service released a statement on Monday evening that the Russian and Syrian presidents, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, agreed to start withdrawing the main part of the Russian aviation task force from Syria because the Russian Aerospace Forces had fulfilled the fundamental tasks which had been assigned to them. Russia will leave an air flight control center in the Syrian territory that will monitor the observation of the Syrian ceasefire, the Kremlin said. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered starting the Russian troops’ withdrawal as of March 15. Read more