Moscow is working with Ankara and Tehran to stabilize the situation, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said
Russia has reports that the US and the UK might be implicated in supporting the al-Qaeda-affiliated militants currently on the offensive in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra, launched a surprise attack from Idlib last week and has since taken Aleppo and Hama. US journalist Tucker Carlson asked Lavrov who was supporting the terrorists in Syria, during the interview that aired on Thursday.
”Well, we have some information,” Lavrov said. “The information which is being floated and it’s in the public domain, mentions, among others, the Americans, the Brits. Some people say that Israel is interested in making this situation aggravated so that Gaza is not under very close scrutiny.”
“It’s a complicated game. Many actors are involved,” the Russian diplomat added.
Lavrov explained to Carlson that Russia, Iran, and Türkiye brokered a ceasefire in Syria in 2017 and again in 2020, calling this Astana Format “a useful combination of players.”
“The rules of the game are to help Syrians to come to terms with each other and to prevent separatist threats from getting strong,” the diplomat said. “That’s what the Americans are doing in the east of Syria when they groom some Kurdish separatists using the profits from oil and grain sold, the resources which they occupy.”
“We would like to discuss with all our partners in this process the way to cut the channels of financing and arming” the terrorists, he added.
Lavrov has already spoken with his Turkish and Iranian colleagues, he told Carlson, and intends to meet with them again on Friday at a conference in Qatar. Russia will push for “strict implementation” of the deal concerning Idlib because that province of Syria is where the terrorists emerged from.
“The arrangements reached in 2019 and 2020 provided for our Turkish friends to control the situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone and to separate the HTS from the opposition, which is non-terrorist and which cooperates with Türkiye,” Lavrov said.
Military and security leaders of all three countries are also in contact with each other, Russia’s top diplomat added.
Carlson sought a meeting with Lavrov, saying he was appalled that the US and Russia are inching closer to an open war over Ukraine. He also tried to get an interview with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky but this was blocked, reportedly by the US government.
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