Russian president Vladimir Putin said that the Syria peace talks will start soon in Kazakhstan, after Russia, Turkey, and Iran have agreed to guarantee Syria peace talks and support widening a ceasefire across the whole country.
Many ceasefire agreements accompanied by peace talks meetings were organized to help find a solution to the crisis, but Assad regime and Iranian forces breached every ceasefire and hindered every peace talks meeting without any pressure moves or real steps from the western powers.
The recent months especially witnessed numerous meetings between the US and Russian foreign ministers to find a solution to the Syria crisis, end the violence and start new peace talks but they led to nothing.
in the end, Russia said it has a new plan for Syria peace talks which can be achieved with powers that have a real effect on the Syrian ground.
Russia and Iran both back Assad, but Turkey, a NATO member, has long made clear it would prefer him to step down. Ankara has however sought to fix its relation with Russia in recent months after the coup attempt as the west abandoned its relations with Turkey.
The three countries said they were ready to help broker a Syria peace deal after the three countries held talks in Moscow on Tuesday and adopted a new declaration.
This new relation included Turkey’s moderation of its rhetoric on Assad, changing the goal of its military operation in Syria, decreasing its support for the armed Syrian opposition, and playing a major role in bringing the Syrian opposition to one table with Assad through the newly made agreement as the new agreement shows.
The move in general underlines the growing strength of Moscow’s links with Tehran and Ankara, despite the murder on Monday of Russia’s envoy to Turkey, and reflects Putin’s desire to strengthen Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East and more widely.
On Friday, Assad thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for having been Syria’s main partner in the battle and said the city’s fall had opened the door to a political process.
Putin said afterward that Russia, Iran, Turkey and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had all agreed that the Kazakh capital of Astana should be the venue for new Syrian peace negotiations.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said he expected the talks in Astana to take place in mid-January. But TASS news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying: “I wouldn’t talk now about timing. Right now contacts are being made and preparation is under way for the meeting.”
He said Putin would have a series of international telephone calls later on Friday to discuss the Astana talks. Speaking at his end-of-year news conference, Putin said the next step for Syria would be a nationwide ceasefire.
However, it is not yet known how the US, the UN, and the western government will react to this new declaration and whether they will accept it or not, as the troika have moved everyone else aside and started what we can call “a new era in the Syria crisis.”
