Sochi: Russian President Vladimir Putin held a rare meeting with Bashar Al Assad on Thursday and said the situation in Syria is now favourable for the beginning of a “political process”, which would lead to the withdrawal of foreign forces.
“After the military success [of the Syrian regime in recent months], supplementary conditions have been created, which favour the start of a political process on a major scale,” Putin said in a statement released by the Kremlin following the meeting in the southern Russian city of Sochi.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “there were detailed discussions” between the two leaders, who last met in December at a Russian military air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia.
“With the start of the political process in its most active phase, foreign armed forces will withdraw from Syrian territory,” Putin said, without specifying which foreign forces.
Russia has been involved in Syria’s civil war since September 2015. Its military support not only ensured the survival of Al Assad’s regime, it changed the course of the war.
According to a Kremlin statement, Al Assad said “stability is improving” in Syria, “opening the door to the political process we started some time ago”.
Russian television broadcast short clips from the two men’s discussion.
The visit comes on the eve of a meeting in Sochi between Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the first face-to-face talk of the year between the veteran leaders.
Syria’s conflict began with mass protests against the Al Assad family’s decades-long rule. A brutal regime crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency eventually tipped the country into civil war. More than 450,000 people have been killed and 11 million have been displaced from their homes during the course of the war.
Al Assad’s future has been a key sticking point in years of failed peace efforts. The opposition and its Western backers have demanded he step aside as part of a political transition, something the regime has adamantly rejected.
