Russia's president Vladimir Putin spoke with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan about Syria by phone and invited him to visit Russia in the next few days, the Kremlin said late on Tuesday.
The Kremlin said that in their phone conversation, Putin and Erdogan agreed to ensure Syria's territorial integrity.
"Vladimir Putin invited Tayyip Erdogan to come to Russia with a working visit in the coming days. The invitation has been accepted," the Kremlin said in a statement.
The leaders also discussed the need to avoid possible conflicts between Turkish and Syrian military, according to the statement.
On Tuesday, Turkey ignored U.S. sanctions and pressed on with its offensive, while the Russia-backed Syrian army roared into one of the most hotly contested cities abandoned by U.S. forces in Donald Trump’s retreat. Reuters journalists accompanied Syrian government forces who entered the center of Manbij, a flashpoint where U.S. troops had previously conducted joint patrols with Turkey. Russian and Syrian flags were flying from a building on the city outskirts, and from a convoy of military vehicles.
Russia’s Interfax news agency, citing Moscow’s Defense Ministry, said later that Syrian forces had taken control of an area of more than 1,000 square kilometers around Manbij. This included Tabqa military airfield, two hydroelectric power plants and several bridges across the Euphrates river, it said.
In Manbij, Syrian troops were manning joint checkpoints alongside regional Kurdish militia (YPG), witnesses said.
A YPG official said Turkish-backed fighters were still 15 km north of the city. Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu agency said six civilians were killed and 13 wounded in three villages near the town of Jarablus in a YPG attack launched from north of Manbij.
A week after reversing U.S. policy and moving troops out of the way to allow Turkey to attack Washington’s Syrian allies, Trump announced a package of sanctions to punish Ankara. But the measures - mainly a hike in steel tariffs and a pause in trade talks - were less robust than financial markets had anticipated, and Trump’s critics derided them as too feeble to have an impact. Following Trump’s announcement, the U.S. Treasury said Monday it had sanctioned Turkey’s Energy, Defense and Interior ministers, as well as the Energy and Defense ministries.
Trump’s unexpected decision to withhold protection from Syria’s Kurds after a phone call with Erdogan a week ago swiftly upended five years of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
The withdrawal gives a free hand to Washington’s adversaries in the world’s deadliest ongoing war, namely Syrian Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.
The United States announced Sunday it was withdrawing its entire force of 1,000 troops from northern Syria. Its former Kurdish allies immediately forged a new alliance with Assad’s government, inviting the army into towns across the breadth of their territory.
Russian-backed Syrian government forces moved swiftly to fill the void left by departing Americans from Manbij west of the Euphrates River, which Turkey has vowed to capture. “We are out of Manbij,” said Col. Myles B. Caggins, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Syria. Trump’s pullout ends joint U.S.-Turkish patrols of the Manbij area under a deal meant to persuade Turkey not to invade and attack the Kurdish YPG, seen by Ankara as a terrorist group aligned with Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkey. The YPG is also the main component of the SDF, which had been Washington’s key regional ally fighting Daesh (ISIS) militants.
A Reuters cameraman on the Turkish frontier reported heavy bombardment Tuesday morning of the Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain where an SDF spokesman reported a fierce battle going on.
France said Tuesday it would hold talks soon with Iraqi and Kurdish leaders to weigh how, amid the upheaval triggered by the Turkish incursion, to secure thousands of foreign and regional Daesh militants held in Syrian camps and prisons. Turkey says it aims to defeat the Kurdish YPG militia and create a “safe zone” where millions of Syrian war refugees now in Turkey could be resettled.
The United Nations says 160,000 people have fled their homes as Turkish forces advance. The regional Kurdish administration puts the number of displaced at 270,000. Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said it had suspended most medical aid activities in northeast Syria and was evacuating all international staff in the wake of airstrikes and violence during Turkey’s incursion.
Erdogan, who has pledged to continue military operations come what may, said Ankara was giving the world a chance to bring peace to the region.
“The international community missed its opportunity to prevent the Syrian crisis from pulling an entire region into a maelstrom of instability,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “The European Union - and the world - should support what Turkey is trying to do.”
Agencies
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