Russian troops to start leaving Syria

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said 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 today.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had telephoned Assad to inform him of the 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 U.N.-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 airstrikes.

Questions remained about the practical implications of Putin's announcement. It was not clear whether Russian airstrikes would stop. Russia will retain the capability to launch them from the Latakia base.

By intervening in Syria, Putin has restored Russia's status as a major international player capable of exerting influence far from its borders and has 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 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 trading partner, after Ankara shot down a Russian fighter jet that was part of the Syria deployment.

Russia's currency gained by more than 1 percent after news broke of the withdrawal.

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.”