Assad, Putin hold talks in Moscow
Print Edition
SYRIAN President Bashar Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to thank Russia’s Vladimir Putin personally for his military support.
It was Assad’s first foreign visit since the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, and came three weeks after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes against militants in Syria that has also bolstered Assad’s forces.
The Kremlin, which said it had invited Assad to visit Moscow, kept the visit quiet until yesterday morning, broadcasting a meeting between the two men in the Kremlin and releasing a transcript of an exchange they had.
Putin said he hoped progress on the military front would be followed by moves toward a political solution in Syria, bolstering Western hopes Moscow will use its increased influence on Damascus to persuade Assad into talking to his opponents.
Assad’s confidence is likely to be boosted by the visit, which comes as his forces wage counteroffensives in western Syria against insurgents backed by Assad’s foreign opponent, as well as Islamic State militants.
“First of all I wanted to express my huge gratitude to the whole leadership of the Russian Federation for the help they are giving Syria,” Assad told Putin.
“If it was not for your actions and your decisions the terrorism which is spreading in the region would have swallowed up a much greater area and spread over an even greater territory,” he said.
Russian state TV made the meeting its top news item, showing Assad, dressed in a dark blue suit, talking to Putin, together with the Russian foreign and defence ministers.
The Kommersant daily cited unnamed sources saying meetings between the two delegations had lasted over three hours.
The Syrian presidency Twitter account said Assad and Putin held three rounds of talks — one of them a closed meeting and the other two including Russia’s foreign and defence ministers.
Putin said Russia had felt compelled to act in Syria because of the threat Islamist militants fighting Assad’s forces there posed to its own security.
“Unfortunately on Syrian territory there are about 4,000 people from the former Soviet Union — at a minimum — fighting government forces with weapons in their hands,” said Putin.
“We, it goes without saying, can not allow them to turn up on Russian territory after they have received battlefield experience and undergone ideological instruction.”
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