Solitudinem fecerunt,
pacem appelunt
Publius Gaius Cornelius Tacitus
Syria - Russian Intervention - 2019
By January 2019 the US and Turkey were engaged in negotiations surrounding a proposed 30 kilometer (18 mile) "buffer zone" in Syria between Turkish and Kurdish forces. Following a phone conversation with President Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the US had proposed the creation of a 30 km buffer zone in Syria to be controlled by the Turkish military. Damascus rejected the proposal, with a senior Syrian official telling Syrian media that Ankara had turned "a blind eye to the international resolutions which have always affirmed respect for Syrian territorial integrity."
Russian Foreign Minister Serge Lavrov said that any agreement involving Syrian territory must include agreement from Damascus. "As for discussions about the buffer zone, the security zone, this cannot be the subject of an agreement between Russia and Turkey. This should be the subject of an agreement with the participation of the Syrian government, because ultimately the need to restore the Syrian government's control over the country's whole territory, including the zone, is clear to everyone."
30 September 2019 marked the fourth anniversary of the counterterrorism operation the Russian Armed Forces carried out in Syria at the latter's request. By the fall of 2015, the situation in Syria was critical. As of September 30, 2015, only 8 percent of the country’s territory was under government control. On September 30, 2015, then-Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Executive Office Sergei Ivanov said that Syrian President Bashar Assad had asked Moscow for military assistance. Russian President Vladimir Putin requested the upper house’s consent to deploy a military contingent abroad, and lawmakers unanimously voted in favor — air support for the Syrian government was declared the purpose of the military operation. Turkish Operation Peace Spring, launched on 9 October, caused a significant drawback for militant factions, including US allies in the region. The shift allowed the Syrian military to reclaim several cities after striking a deal with the Kurdish self-defence forces. As US troops abandoned positions in northern Syria under the de facto control of local Kurdish forces amid the Turkish onslaught, Russian peacekeeping patrols quietly began operating in Manbij, northern Syria in a bid to prevent fighting between Turkish and Syrian Army forces. On 22 October 2019, Presidents of Russia and Turkey Vladimir Putin and Tayyip Erdogan at a meeting in Sochi adopted a memorandum on joint actions to resolve the situation in northeast Syria. According to the document, the Russian military police and the Syrian military are introduced from noon on October 23 to areas bordering the Turkish operation zone in Syria. Kurdish groups are given 150 hours to completely free the 30-kilometer zone from the Turkish border, after which the military of Russia and Turkey will begin joint patrols.
Russian Aerospace Forces helicopters landed 22 October 2019 at the Tabqa Airfield in the Raqqa Province of Syria, at what was formerly a US military base. The facility is secured by the Syrian Arab Army and militants allied with Damascus. The American forces had to abandon their facility at the destroyed airfield as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) left the area amid intense clashes with the Turkish Army. On 23 October 2019 the Russian military began to patrol the border zone of Syria and Turkey. The Ministry of Defense reported that the Russian military also held a meeting with the leadership of the local administration of the city of Kobani, at which they discussed the implementation of the provisions of the memorandum. "Today, Russian military police patrolled for the first time on the designated route in northern Syria in accordance with the memorandum of cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Turkish Republic, signed in Sochi on October 22. Residents of Syrian settlements welcomed the Russian military police along the convoy," message. In addition, the Russian military met with the leadership of the local administration of the city of Kobani (Ain al-Arab), where they discussed the implementation of the provisions of the memorandum.
According to Amos Yadlin, former head of the Israeli military’s Military Intelligence Directorate, “All pairs of enemies in the Middle East enjoy reasonably good ties with Russia: Saudi Arabia and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Turks, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Turkey, and so on.” Russia, Yadlin said, is not a Middle Eastern ‘hegemon’ in the traditional sense of the term, with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt sharing that title, in his view. Furthermore, he noted, Washington still has far greater forces in the Middle East than Moscow. “The Russian success stems from their ability to use very few forces with determination and rules of engagement that only they can allow themselves, with a veto at the UN Security Council and a patriotic audience at home,” Yadlin said, without elaborating.
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