• Syria, Ankara: completed withdrawal of the Kurds, stop to offensive
  • Syria, Erdogan sees Putin. New 150-hour truce for the evacuation of the Kurds
  • Syria, Erdogan: via the Kurds or attack again. Assad in Idlib: "The Turkish president is a thief"
  • Syria, Kurds: "From Turkey use of unconventional weapons". Ankara denies

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October 23, 2019After the announcement by Turkey of having interrupted the offensive in Syria , the intervention of the president of the United States comes. That seems to ignore the role played by Putin's Russia and the diplomatic result is in place.

Withdrawal of US sanctions against Ankara
Trump, announced the lifting of the sanctions against Turkey that he had imposed in mid-October following the launch of the Ankara military offensive against the Kurds in the northeast of Syria.

"This morning the government of Turkey informed my administration that they will stop fighting and offensive in Syria and will make the permanent ceasefire", therefore "I asked the Treasury Secretary to revoke all the sanctions imposed on October 14 in response to the offensive of the Turkey ", declared Trump at the White House.

"We have saved the lives of thousands of Kurds"
"The American agreement on Syria has saved the lives of thousands of Kurds." This was stated by US President Donald Trump during a press conference at the White House on Syria. "We have avoided - he added - a military intervention that could have cost the lives of thousands of people in Northern Syria".

US troops remain to protect oil sites. "Others fight on sand blasted"
"A small number of US troops is staying in Syria to protect oil fields," Trump announces. "We let others fight over this long battle on a blood-soaked sand. We have avoided another costly military intervention in which thousands of people could have died," he added, explaining that "the United States reserves the right to increase sanctions against Turkey, if human rights are violated ".

"We are not the police of the world"
"We are building a solid military force like never before since my election. But we will not waste it. It will never happen again," said Trump. "No one can defeat us, no one, but our military is not the world police ".

The crisis recomposes itself
Trump's statements arrive following the withdrawal of US troops from the northern area of ​​Syria, which caused a crisis in the region and undermined Kurdish militias, traditional US allies. After the withdrawal of US troops, in fact, Turkey has decided to invade the area no longer manned by American forces. For this reason, in the past few days, US Vice President Mike Pence had flown to Ankara to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, where an agreement had been found for a 5-day ceasefire.

The forces rearrange themselves on the chessboard
Russian forces have crossed the Euphrates River and are heading towards the border between Syria and Turkey as foreseen by the agreement reached by Sochi by Putin and Erdogan: the Russian Defense Ministry quoted by the Tass and Interfax agencies reports. "The units of the Russian military police - says the ministry - will help to guarantee the safety of the civilian population and to maintain order and respect for the law". Moscow announces that its military "will patrol designated areas and assist in the withdrawal of Kurdish militias and their weapons at a distance of 30 kilometers from the border between Syria and Turkey".

Turkey: it is not necessary to take offensive action
"It is not necessary" to resume the offensive against the Kurdish fighters in Syria, since "their withdrawal" from the border areas has been "completed", as "the United States confirmed". According to the international media, the Turkish defense minister, Hulusi Akar, said in a statement that "at this stage, it is not necessary to carry out a new operation".

Ankara has announced that it has received from Washington the assurance of the withdrawal of the Ypg militias at the end of a 120-hour truce, which allowed Ankara to define a 'safe zone' extended east of the Euphrates river for 440 km along the border with Turkey and to draw with Moscow the future of the immediate north-east of the Middle Eastern country. The disengagement of the American military in the area has become the tempting opportunity for Russia, whose presence in an area from which it was completely absent now becomes decisive and at the center of the meeting, which took place yesterday in Sochi, on the Black Sea, between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. The Damascus regime, for its part, will take control of the north of the country with the blessing of Moscow, which acts as guarantor for Ankara compared to the moves of President Bashar al Assad. A guarantor role that will manifest itself in Russia's renewed commitment to guarantee the continuation of the Adana agreement, with which Bashar's father, Hafez, in 1998 undertook to prevent attacks by Kurds from the PKK on Turkey from their territory (Ypg is the Syrian PKK wing and the contiguity between the two organizations is a fact for Ankara).

Erdogan will take "necessary measures" if Kurdish forces remain
Turkey will take the "necessary measures" if two agreements reached with Washington and Moscow that provide for the withdrawal of a Kurdish militia from north-eastern Syria will not be respected. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned, "There is no doubt that there are changes in the necessary measures that will have to be taken if the promises made in the agreements with the United States and Russia are not kept," said Erdogan

The agreement for the control of the territory
Turkey will continue to maintain control of a territory of 120 km of extension and 30 of depth, included between the cities of Tel Abyad (west) and Ras Al Ayn (east) taken from Ypg with the offensive "Source of peace" of the past weeks. Starting today, 12 Russian and Syrian military personnel will monitor the actual abandonment of the safe zone by the Ypg militiamen, within 150 hours outside the aforementioned area, destined to remain under the control of Ankara. Moscow has pledged to guarantee the total abandonment of the Ypg militiamen of the city of Tal Rifat, but above all of Manbij. The latter is located outside the safe zone, west of the Euphrates and has always been a center that Turkey has insisted on with the US in recent years for it to be abandoned by Ypg. Russia-Turkey joint patrols are instead planned for a depth of 10 km, east and west of the territory between Tel Abyad and Ras Al Ayn under the control of the Ankara army, along the entire Turkish border, with the exclusion of the city of Qamishli. A joint action for which a permanent coordination mechanism will be established.

Moscow: via the Kurds or the Turks will crush them
"The United States has betrayed the Kurds, who must now move away from the Turkish-Syrian border as envisaged by the agreement reached yesterday by Moscow and Ankara", otherwise "they will be crushed by the Turkish military machine": Putin's spokesman Dmitri said so Peskov, cited by Russian agencies. Peskov also accused the US of having "opted to abandon the Kurds at the border, almost forcing them to fight against the Turks".

"Assad supports Putin-Erdogan agreement"
Syrian President Bashar al Assad "fully supports" the results of the meeting between the head of the Kremlin Vladimir Putin and the Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi. Thus stated the spokesman of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, talking to journalists. According to Peskov, Assad also assured the availability "of the Syrian border guards to patrol the border" between Syria and Turkey with the Russian military police. These statements, said the Kremlin spokesman, were made during a phone call that Putin had with Assad to inform him of the contents of the Memorandum signed at the Sochi summit. During the interview, which took place on a Russian initiative, the head of the Kremlin also informed Assad that the "main priority is to restore the territorial integrity of Syria and to strengthen political efforts".

Berlin, no security agreement on request
"The formation of a common opinion in the German government on the proposal of the Minister of Defense is not yet concluded": said the spokesperson of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffen Seibert, in a government press conference in Berlin, about the discussion aroused by the proposal of the Minister and leader of the CDU Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to create a security zone in Syria, an initiative that had not been previously agreed with the foreign minister, the Social Democrat Heiko Maas. "In the coming days, the proposal will play a role in the various contacts at the international level and also in the meetings of NATO defense ministers", the spokesman of Chancellor Merkel continued.