Rusia

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday met with a high-level Russian delegation advocating for jointly hosting an international conference on refugees in the capital Damascus next month.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented further casualties in the Russian airstrikes on a camp belonging to the Ankara-backed al-Sham Corps in Jabal al-Dawila area in Harem, north-west of Idlib.

Turkey’s tests of its Russian-made S-400 air defense systems violate Ankara’s commitment to NATO and may hamper its security relations with the US, the Pentagon has said, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed the drills.

The Russian and Turkish sides are holding talks in the Russian capital, Moscow, to discuss the latest developments on the Syrian front.

Russian News agency TASS reported that the Turkish Deputy-Foreign Minister, Sedat Önal, arrived in Moscow on Thursday, at the head of a political delegation, to hold meetings with Russian officials on Syria and Libya.

In light of the conflict in the eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece, Russia may be looking to strengthen its ties with Greece in order to further its interests in the region.

French President Emmanuel Macron has taken an activist approach recently to a range of thorny and persistent challenges in and around Europe.

The war in Nagorno-Karabakh continues, the loss of manpower and military equipment of Armenia and Azerbaijan is increasing, and Syrian mercenaries continue to head to the front line, recruited by Turks and Azeris to take part in the fighting.