Assad welcomes new Russian bases in Syria after Putin meeting
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that he would welcome any Russian proposals to set up new military bases and boost troop numbers in the Middle Eastern country, suggesting Moscow’s military presence there should become permanent.
When Russia intervened in the war in Syria in 2015, four years after protests began in the country, it helped tip the balance in al-Assad’s favour, ensuring the Syrian leader’s survival despite Western demands that he be toppled.
Al-Assad, who met President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Wednesday, has supported Moscow’s war in Ukraine and told Russia’s state news agency RIA that Damascus recognises the territories claimed by the Kremlin in Ukraine.
Syria, al-Assad said, would welcome any Russian proposals to set up new military bases and boost Russian troop numbers – and said they need not be temporary.
“We think that expanding the Russian presence in Syria is a good thing,” al-Assad told RIA in an interview published on Thursday. “Russia’s military presence in any country should not be based on anything temporary.”
“We believe that if Russia has the desire to expand bases or increase their number, it is a technical or logistical issue.”
In a separate interview with the Russian outlet Sputnik, al-Assad also said that he would not meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until what he termed Ankara’s “illegal occupation” of Syrian land was over.
“This is linked to arriving at a stage Turkey would clearly be ready and without any ambiguity to exit completely from Syrian territory and end its support of terrorism and restore the situation that prevailed before the start of the war on Syria,” al-Assad told Sputnik in an interview relayed by Lebanon’s pro-Iran Hezbollah’s group’s al Manar TV station on Thursday.
“This is the only situation when it would then be possible to have a meeting between me and Erdogan. Aside from that what’s the value of such a meeting and why would we do it if it would not achieve final results for the war in Syria,” he added in the clearest remarks on the recent rapprochement.
The defence ministers of the two countries met late last year for the highest-level talks between the two neighbours, whose governments have been at odds since the war in Syria began.
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