Russia has sent hundreds of additional troops to Syria to help patrol the country’s Turkey-Syria border after a deal between Moscow and Ankara, the Russian Defense Ministry said Friday.
The ministry said about 300 military police have arrived in Syria to patrol the northeastern areas along the border with Turkey and oversee the pullout of Syrian Kurdish fighters from there. Military cargo planes also airlifted 20 armored vehicles for the mission, it added.
After Turkey invaded northeastern Syria this month, an offensive enabled by President Donald Trump’s abrupt pullout of US troops, Moscow and Ankara struck a deal splitting control of northeastern Syria.
The new Russian troops sent in — as American soldiers pull out — further underscore how the situation on the ground in Syria has dramatically changed with Turkey’s invasion and subsequent developments.
Russia said Friday the additional battalion of military police dispatched to Syria comes from Chechnya, a Russian region that saw two devastating separatist wars in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, before Moscow regained control. Troops from Chechnya, known for their fierce warrior spirit, have regularly been sent to Syria on rotation bases in recent years.
The Russian military does not release the total number of its contingent in Syria, and it did not say on Friday how many troops will be involved in the patrol mission on the Turkish border.
Pentagon chief Mark Esper said Friday that the United States will leave more American troops and armored vehicles in eastern Syria to help prevent Islamic State militants from gaining access to oil fields controlled by US-allied Syrian Kurds. That deployment will likely include tanks, a US official said.
The defense secretary confirmed that the US will send in an armored force to the region, but he did not provide details or the number of troops.
His comments at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels reflected one more change in what has been a rapidly shifting US stance on American forces in Syria.
The US official who send the deployment probably would include tanks offered no more details. This official was not authorized to discuss internal discussions about military planning and spoke on condition of anonymity.
He said the US wants to ensure that Islamic State militants do not get access to the oil, which could give the insurgent group to obtain resources to rebuild.
Trump in the past days has turned a greater focus on the Syrian oil facilities in the eastern part of the country, saying US will stay in Syria to protect them.
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