Russian media reveals that Moscow has withdrawn all its military personnel from Syria and left its strategic Tartus naval centre unstaffed because of the escalating security threat in the war-torn country
AFP , Wednesday 26 Jun 2013
"Russia has withdrawn all its military personnel from Syria and left its strategic Tartus naval centre unstaffed because of the escalating security threat in the war-torn country, the Vedomosti daily said Wednesday.
The source said the decision was taken to limit the dangers posed to Russians amid a raging civil war and to reduce the threat of political damage that could result from Russians being killed by either side.The respected business daily cited an unnamed source in the Russian defence ministry as saying that no Russian defence ministry military or civilian personnel were now present in Syria, a Soviet-era ally of Moscow.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov had appeared to confirm the evacuation of military staff in an interview with the London-published Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat published on Friday.
"Today, the Russian defence ministry does not have a single person in Syria," he said.
"In Tartus, we never had a base in the first place. It is a technical facility for maintaining ships sailing in the Mediterranean," he added.
The facility in the Mediterranean port of Tartus, located in the Alawite Muslim heartland region of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, is Russia's only such asset outside the former Soviet Union.
Created as the result of an agreement between Damascus and Moscow in 1971, the Tartus facility was believed in recent months to have been staffed by just a few dozen Russian defence ministry personnel.
Russia always insisted on calling it not a base but a "point of military-technical supply of the Russian Navy". But analysts have always seen its sheer existence as a huge asset for Moscow......"
1 comment:
sounds like bull.
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