Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan will discuss their differences in Idlib, Syria, during a meeting in Moscow, with the aim of reducing tension between the two parties in the region. While Putin said at the beginning of the meeting that "the situation in Idlib has become very dangerous," Erdogan expressed his hope for "calm in the region and between the two countries."
Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Thursday with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Moscow in a new step to try to calm the situation in Syria's Idlib, after the escalation of tension between the two countries in the region.
"The situation ... in Idlib has become so serious that it requires us to have a personal conversation," Putin said at the start of the meeting. As for Erdogan, he went to his Russian counterpart, saying, "The eyes of the whole world are personal to us," adding that "the appropriate measures and decisions that we make here will lead to calm in the region and between our two countries."
On the eve of his meeting with Putin, the Turkish President expressed his hope to "quickly reach" a cease-fire in the northwestern province of Idlib, where since the end of February, Ankara has launched a large-scale operation against Syrian forces receiving support from Moscow.
In December, the Syrian regime forces launched an attack on Idlib, the last stronghold of the opposition factions and jihadists in the northwest of the country, causing a humanitarian catastrophe with the displacement of nearly a million people towards the Turkish border.
This escalation in the field led to diplomatic tension between Moscow, an ally of the Syrian regime, and Ankara, which supports opposition factions in the region, which raised fears of a direct confrontation between the two countries.
A confrontation between the Syrian forces backed by Russia and the Turkish army
Dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed in Idlib in recent weeks. Erdogan raised the ceiling last week, calling on Europe to support his move in Syria, and causing the start of a new migration crisis after he opened Turkey's borders with Greece to migrants and refugees.
Putin expressed his condolences to Erdogan on Thursday over the killing of the Turkish soldiers, noting that "the Syrian army has also suffered great losses" in the past weeks.
"We must talk about everything, so that such things do not happen again and so that the Russian-Turkish relations, which I know we value, do not deteriorate," Putin stressed.
Moscow interfered in Syria in 2015 with an air campaign in support of Assad. On Thursday, 15 civilians, including a child, were killed by air strikes in Idlib, as announced by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Ankara is demanding that the Assad forces stop their offensive in Idlib and withdraw beyond the lines agreed with Russia in 2018 in Sochi.
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