... asking Russia for additional security guarantees. After February 24, amid Russia–U.S. relations essentially severed, this line of conduct assumed by the SDF will hardly strike a chord with Moscow.
Currently, Russia is not so unequivocally set against Turkey’s possible operation in Syria, and although rumors of Russia’s troops being possibly withdrawn from the bases in Northeast Syria
have not so far been confirmed
, their circulation suggests this scenario is within the realm of what is possible. There is
evidence
of the U.S. deploying its troops in those ...
... Russo-Turkish relations since the end of the First World War. It demonstrated how easily a complex conflict like the Syrian war could drift into a “nuclear war by accident.” For months afterwards, Russo-Turkish relations continued to bubble with antagonism. Russian
overtures
to the Kurds of Turkey and Syria were met by Turkish
overtures
toward the Crimean Tatars and
support
for Azerbaijan in its Four-Day War over Nagorno-Karabakh. However, Moscow and Ankara managed to move beyond the animosity and toward rapprochement, a process that intensified ...
... convoys to Idlib across the contact line and in cooperation with the Syrian government. In this regard, it may be helpful to advance discussion on the details of this approach. The difficulty is that neither humanitarian convoys nor the military of Syria, Russia, Turkey or the United States will be protected from provocations by terrorists. Although Turkey has close relations in Idlib with a number of anti-government Syrian groups affiliated with the so-called “Syrian National Army”, these are weak compared ...
... as a result of lackluster efforts in this respect. When it comes to Syria, Russia must begin floating pragmatic compromise solutions to provoke wider discussion about them in order to discover whether they are acceptable for all stakeholders. As for Turkey, Russia did indeed unofficially legitimize its sphere of influence in Syria, but should begin talking more about how destabilizing it is become and how counterproductive Ankara’s unrealistically recalcitrant stance on compromising on President Assad’s political future is for the peace process. Concerning Iran, Russia ...
... the U.S. sometimes makes to its partners) increases its appeal among their elite, but soft power among civil society does not appear to be too significant except in the tourism industry.
South Caucasus: Tricky Relations with Turkey
Andrey Kortunov:
Syria: In the Middle of a Long Cycle
It is here at the juncture between Russia, Turkey, and Iran where Moscow recently made the most impressive progress in the Ummah Pivot. Its peacekeeper deployment to parts of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region as part of the
Moscow-mediated ceasefire agreement
between it and Armenia in November of ...
... best way of delivering ongoing aid into Idlib and securing greater transparency on wider support across Syria. The alternative—bilateral cross-border support—will not sufficiently meet needs on the ground, will place even greater responsibility on Turkey, and will increase the prospect of Western confrontation with Russia and the Syrian regime.
Importantly, this proposal could also create space for wider political talks on Idlib’s fate. It could lead to a renewed track between Russia, the US, Turkey and Europeans to address the province’s fate in a way that accounts for Syria’s ...
... Russia’s successful and relatively low-budget military operation quickly made Moscow the principal external actor in Syria. As far as we can see, though, Moscow has failed to design any exit strategy over the five years of its immediate involvement in the Syrian conflict. The degree of Russia’s influence on the Damascus regime is also an open question. Is the dog wagging the tail or is the tail wagging the dog?
Could Turkey be the principal beneficiary? Establishing buffer zones in Idlib and in Syria’s northern provinces is Erdogan’s unquestionable achievement. Yet to what degree is Ankara really in control of the situation in Idlib? This continuously festering ...
... situation could get out of hand, the U.S. have therefore been prompted to recognise, at least at expert level, the need to work on technical deconfliction measures in this part of the world. This requires finding a way to untangle the Cyprus, Libya and Syria questions.
Artyom Semyonov:
Gas Without a Fight: Is Turkey Ready to Go to War for Resources in the Mediterranean?
As for Russia’s policy in the Eastern Mediterranean, we should recall Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov visited Damascus and Cyprus in 2020. Mr. Lavrov emphasised that escalation was inadmissible and called for peaceful resolution of the ...
... Turkey’s leadership and Erdogan himself increasingly view the “Idlib question” through the lens of a difficult dialogue with Russia on the Libyan and Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts (on October 25, Russia’s Aerospace Force delivered a strike against the Syrian Corps militants in Idlib, which Russian media dubbed “
Bakh for Karabakh
” [
1
] ). Turkey has started relocating eight military observation posts in Idlib, as those posts had been blocked in an SAA-liberated area (the post in Murek was evacuated on October 19-20, 2020), which is not only for security reasons, but also due to Turkey’s ...
... consensus in Libya, with foreign media having reported headlines addressing the new "front" between Moscow and Ankara in this context.
Paris believes that the missile attack (in the first months of 2018) launched by the U.S., Britain and France in Syria created a rift between Russia and Turkey, who have different views on some issues, especially in Syria. French President Emmanuel Macron said this in a televised interview.
It is no secret that the Western attacks in Syria at that time sought, among other things, to cause a rift in relations ...
