Russia’s military said on Friday that it has begun scaling down its deployment to Syria, as the regime intensified its bombardment of a rebel-held district home to the capital’s main water source. Moscow’s intervention in September 2015 helped turn the tide in favour of President Bashar Al-Assad, whose forces scored a major victory last month with the recapture of opposition stronghold east Aleppo.
Russia, along with fellow regime ally Iran and rebel backer Turkey, is pushing for peace talks to be held later this month in Kazakhstan.
But escalating fighting near Damascus, including reported barrel bombings, has undermined a fragile week-old nationwide ceasefire and left the talks in doubt.
Russia’s military said a naval group headed by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov would be the first to leave the area under a drawdown ordered by President Vladimir Putin on December 29. “The tasks set for the aircraft carrier group during its military mission have been fulfilled,” said Russia’s main commander in Syria, Andrei Kartapolov, quoted by Russian news agencies.
Aircraft on board the carrier conducted some 420 sorties and hit 1,252 “terrorist” targets during the two months that it was involved in the Syria mission, Mr. Kartapolov said. He said that Russia still had sufficient air defence capabilities thanks to its S-300 and S-400 systems deployed in the war-torn country.
During its deployment to Syria, the Soviet-built Kuznetsov was involved in a series of embarrassing accidents, with two jets crashing into the sea.
