World
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (left) and Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov (right) review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony upon Assad's arrival at Moscow on March 14, 2023. Photo: SANA
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syrian President Bashar Assad is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Moscow, ahead of a quadripartite meeting of the deputy foreign ministers of Turkey, Russia and Syria with an Iranian senior advisor.
The Kremlin confirmed that Putin will meet Assad on Wednesday, on the 12th anniversary of the Syrian war, in a statement via Russian state news agency TASS.
Both leaders are expected to talk “further development of Russian-Syrian cooperation in the political, trade, economic and humanitarian spheres, as well as the prospects for a comprehensive settlement of the situation in and around Syria”, per the statement from Kremlin.
The meeting comes ahead of an anticipated meeting of the deputy foreign affairs ministers of both countries with Turkey and Iran to discuss “counter terrorism efforts” in Syria. The meeting was initially set to be tripartite, but Iran was added into the discussion after expressing the country’s desire to be a part of the conversation.
Received by Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, and Putin’s special representative in the Middle East, Assad landed in Moscow along with a delegation from his ministerial cabinet, reported the Syrian state media (SANA).
The trip marks Assad’s first official trip outside the Middle East since the devastating earthquake that shook Syria on February 6, that killed more than 6 thousand people in the war-afflicted country.
Russia has been Assad’s strongest ally throughout the war that initially began as an uprising turned into a brutal civil war.
Over 12 years of conflict in Syria resulted in destruction across the country; hundreds of thousands of people were killed, injured and displaced as a result of the brutalities. Over half a million people have been killed in the conflicts according to the Syrian Observatory for Human rights (SOHR) and displaced more than half of the country’s pre-war population.
By Azhi Rasul
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