The Russian military base in Syria’s Hmeimim has said that an agreement struck between Russia and Turkey on the Syrian province of Idlib gives Russia’s forces “the right to use force to remove terrorist groups” from a demilitarized zone in the area if Ankara fails to respect its pledges.
A western diplomat told Asharq Al-Awsat that Russian forces want to carry out “surgical strikes to wipe out around 2,000 foreign extremists” in the province.
The Memorandum signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi, Russia, on Monday faces many challenges at the level of implementation, said the diplomat.
Among the challenges are differentiating between moderate opposition fighters and extremists, and disarming them in the demilitarized zone, added the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The demilitarized zone is to be established by Oct. 15 and be 15-20 kilometers deep to separate Syrian forces and the opposition, with radical groups withdrawn from the area. The zone will have troops from Russia and Turkey conducting coordinated patrols to monitor the demilitarization and restore traffic to the highway linking major Syrian cities that passes through Idlib.
The fighters are to give up their heavy weapons, mortars and tanks by Oct. 10.
Jan Egeland, a top UN humanitarian aid official for Syria, said, however, "it's not over" and that air raids and ground offensives are likely to continue against terror groups whose fighters live near civilians.
"This is not a peace deal. It is an aversion of (a) whole-scale-war deal," the head of the United Nations Humanitarian Taskforce for Syria told reporters in Geneva.
