Putin orders troops out of Syria

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he was instructing his armed forces to start pulling out of Syria, over five months after he ordered the launch of a military operation that shored up his ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Putin, at a meeting in the Kremlin with his defence and foreign ministers, said Russian military forces in Syria had largely fulfilled their objectives and ordered an intensification of Russia's diplomatic efforts to broker a peace deal in the country.

He, however, did not give a deadline for the completion of the withdrawal and said Russian forces would stay on at the port of Tartous and at the Hmeymim airbase in Syria's Latakia province.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin had telephoned Assad to inform him of the Russian decision.

"The effective work of our military created the conditions for the start of the peace process," Putin said.

"I believe that the task put before the defence ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the whole, been fulfilled, " Putin said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2016.