Russian President Vladimir
Putin said on Monday he would start pulling his armed forces out of Syria, five
months after he ordered a military intervention that turned the tide of the war
in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"I believe that the task
put before the defense ministry and Russian armed forces has, on the whole,
been fulfilled," Putin said at a Kremlin meeting with his defense and
foreign ministers at which he announced the withdrawal, starting on Tuesday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
said Putin had telephoned Assad to inform him of the Russian decision, but
Peskov said the two leaders had not discussed Assad's future - the biggest
obstacle to reaching a peace agreement.
The move was announced on the
day United Nations-brokered talks between the warring sides in Syria resumed in
Geneva.
Putin ordered an
intensification of Russia's diplomatic efforts to end the civil war in Syria,
which has dragged on for five years, killed thousands of people and displaced
millions, many of them seeking refuge in Europe.
But the Russian leader signaled
Moscow would keep a military presence: he 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 air base in Syria's Latakia province, from which
Russia has launched most of its air strikes.
Questions remained about the
practical implications of Putin's announcement. It was not clear if Russian air
strikes would stop. Russia will retain the capability to launch them, from the
Latakia base.
Through its intervention in
Syria, Putin has restored Russia's status as a major international player
capable of exerting its influence far from its borders, and forced the United
States to reckon with Moscow's interests.
Russia's intervention halted a
rebel advance on Assad's stronghold in Latakia just as the collapse of his
forces seemed imminent. They gained time to regroup and then retake ground from
the opposition.
But there was a recognition in
Moscow that pressing ahead with the military operation would produce
diminishing returns. Russian officials have said it is unrealistic to try to
restore Assad's control over all of Syria and the time had come to negotiate a
peace.
The campaign in Syria was
Russia's biggest combat mission outside the former Soviet Union since the Red
Army's occupation of Afghanistan.
It weighed on an already
fragile Russian economy and poisoned relations with Turkey, a major trader
partner, after Ankara shot down a Russian fighter jet that was part of the
Syria deployment.
Russia's rouble currency gained
by more than 1 percent immediately after news broke of the withdrawal.
"The effective work of our
military created the conditions for the start of the peace process," Putin
said at the Kremlin meeting.
"With the participation of
the Russian military ... the Syrian armed forces and patriotic Syrian forces
have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against
international terrorism and have taken the initiative in almost all
respects," Putin said.
"I am therefore ordering
the defense minister, from tomorrow, to start the withdrawal of the main part
of our military contingent from the Syrian Arab Republic."
By signaling the start of a
withdrawal, Russia is likely to soothe relations with the United States, which
has accused the Kremlin of inflaming the Syrian conflict and pursuing its own
narrow interests.
"I think we did it to show
the Americans that we do not have military ambitions and don't need unnecessary
wars," said Ivan Konovalov, director of the Center for Strategic Trend
Studies in Moscow. "They have been accusing us of all kinds of things and
this is a good way of showing them they are wrong."
Russia has said it was in Syria
to fight Islamist terror groups, but a large number of its air strikes were
against anti-Assad groups that Washington and its allies designate as moderate
opposition groups.
Opposition fighters have
alleged that Russia had combat troops on the ground fighting anti-Assad forces.
The Kremlin has never acknowledged this, so it was unclear whether such forces
would be covered by the withdrawal.
Putin said Russia's Tartous
naval base and Hmeymim air base "will function as they did previously.
They must be reliably protected from land, sea and air".
That continued military
presence, and Russia's role as a major diplomatic and financial backer of
Assad, ensures that the Kremlin will maintain powerful leverage over Syria and
the progress of peace talks.
Russia is likely to resist
demands by the anti-Assad opposition and their Western supporters for the
Syrian leader to leave office under the terms of any peace agreement.