Russia is taking new steps to implement its understandings with Israel on necessary guarantees to normalize the situation on the border with the Golan Heights and reinforce the disengagement line of 1974.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced Thursday that all southwestern provinces of Syria had been liberated. The ministry also confirmed the deployment of Russian military police forces on the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel, saying it planned to set up eight observation posts in the area.
The Russian presence there was in support of United Nations peacekeepers in the Golan, it added.
The control over the posts will be transferred to Syrian regime troops once the situation in the area is stabilized.
The move came after Iranian forces have withdrawn their heavy weapons in Syria to a distance of 85 km from the Golan Heights as a culmination of the understandings reached during intensive Russian-Israeli talks in recent months.
Meanwhile, Head of the Main Operations Department at Russia’s General Staff Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi said on Thursday that ISIS has lost its last stronghold in the southwestern part of Syria’s Quneitra province.
"An area of 3,332 square kilometers has been liberated in southwestern Syria," Rudskoi said, adding that "Syrian government forces have taken control of another 146 settlements, with 50 of them coming under the Syrian forces’ control through negotiations."
According to Rudskoi, regime troops and militia units carried out a rapid offensive on a militant stronghold in the Qusayr area, surrounding more than 160 members of ISIS militants, who eventually surrendered.
A Russian diplomatic source also said Thursday that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is cynically falsifying facts while accusing Damascus of strengthening ISIS by relocating them to the country's south.
The source told Novosti that a statement issued by OHCHR was an attempt to accuse Damascus of cooperating with ISIS while the Syrian government was fighting against terrorism.
“There was and there could be no agreements with ISIS. There has never been any relocation of ISIS troops from Yarmouk, Tadamon and Hajar Al-Aswad, as it was claimed by the OHCHR statement,” the source asserted.
He explained that during the mentioned period there was a humanitarian action on evacuation of women and children from these regions to Idlib, at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
“The goal was to prevent victims in the zone of the anti-ISIS counterterrorist operation," the source noted.
On Tuesday, OHCHR criticized the Syrian government for alleged relocation of ISIS terrorists to the southern Syrian province of As-Sweida, which, according to the UN agency, resulted in mass killings that left over 200 people dead.
“The Government of Syria has a duty to take action to prevent violent acts that may endanger the lives and well-being of civilians, including by not placing armed groups such as ISIS in their proximity”, said OHCHR Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani.
“While agreements putting an end to fighting are to be welcomed, the well-being of civilians must be paramount in any considerations,” said the spokesperson, stressing that “the transfer of armed fighters with a history of gross human rights abuses and contempt towards international law, can mean an increase in the likelihood of violent attacks against civilians like the ones carried out last week in As-Sweida.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that only Syrians are entitled to determine their country’s future.
Lavrov spoke during a press conference at the conclusion of a Russia-ASEAN meeting in Singapore on Thursday.
The Minister said that Russia considers the attempts of some external players to determine Syria’s fate on behalf of the Syrians as “unconstructive and useless.”
