Wed 12 February 2020:
Despite repeatedly claiming it wants to put an end to the conflict in northwestern Syria’s Idlib, Russia continues to fuel the war with attacks. It has increasingly assumed a hypocritical stance at the expense of a humanitarian catastrophe in the region.
On Tuesday, Moscow released one of its usual statements – a couple of sentences on the humanitarian chaos in Idlib, an expression of concern on the escalating tensions but no concrete actions on the ground to back these words.
Moscow considers the implementation of Russia-Turkey agreements on Syria a top priority, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“At the moment, we consider the implementation of the Sochi agreement and the suppression of any terrorist activity against Syrian forces and Russian military facilities our top priorities,” he said, adding that the situation “worries” Kremlin.
While the statement was circulating in media, there was other news coming from the region. Reports claimed that 12 more civilians were killed in attacks launched by the Syrian regime and Russia in Idlib. According to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, half of those civilians killed were children, adding yet another layer to the tragedy caused by Russia’s actions.
It has been months now since regime forces sped up attacks on Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in the war-torn country, targeting innocent civilians under the pretext of fighting terrorists. However, the regime is not alone in its attacks, ongoing since April 2019. As its backer, Russia is often active on the ground aggravating the humanitarian crisis.
According to a U.N. statement on Tuesday, nearly 700,000 people have fled the region due to the regime offensive on Idlib. This marked the biggest movement of migrants in the nine-year-old conflict.
“In just 10 weeks, since Dec. 1, some 690,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Idlib and surrounding areas,” a spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
“This is, from our initial analysis, the largest number of people displaced in a single period since the Syrian crisis began almost nine years ago,” David Swanson said.
The regime and its supporters have been violating the Sochi agreement that was reached on Sept. 17 by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
According to the agreement, the cease-fire in the Idlib region would be preserved, with the withdrawal of heavy arms and radicals from the region. Before the agreement, the Assad regime was signaling a huge operation on Idlib, causing fears of a new humanitarian crisis for the international community.
According to U.N. figures, the Syrian conflict has caused the biggest refugee crisis in the world, with 5.5 million people fleeing the country and 6 million others displaced within Syria.
At least 27,000 civilians flee Idlib, Syria in past four days
Nearly 27,000 civilians have left their homes in northwest Syria in the last four days because of attacks by Assad regime forces and their allies, according to a Syrian relief group.
The Syria’s Response Coordination Group said about 27,000 civilians in residential areas of Aleppo and the de-escalation zone in Idlib are headed to areas near the Turkish border due to the attacks that violate a cease-fire agreement between Turkey and Russia.
Civilians flee to areas near the Turkish border or take shelter in areas cleared of terrorists by Turkey’s anti-terror operations.
Since Jan. 2019, the number of Syrians displaced from Idlib and Aleppo has grown to nearly 1.8 million.
In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.
But more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in attacks by the regime and Russian forces in the zone as the cease-fire continues to be violated.
In a fresh move, Turkey announced Jan. 10 a new cease-fire in Idlib would start after midnight Jan. 12, however, the regime and Iran-backed terrorist groups continued attacks.
Since the eruption of the bloody civil war in Syria in 2011, Turkey has taken in 3.7 million Syrians fleeing that country to Turkey — making it the world’s top refugee-hosting country.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
