Russia sends Chechen military police to Syria after safe zone deal

Russia has deployed around 300 military police officers from Chechnya to conduct special patrols in the 30-km safe zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, the Defence Ministry in Moscow announced today. The official statement said that they had embarked from an airfield in the area of North Ossetia next to Chechnya.

Along with the military police, military transport aircraft and armoured vehicles were delivered to the Humeymim air base on the Syrian coast.

Apart from patrolling the safe zone, the police officers will assist in the withdrawal of Kurdish militia units from the area as part of the deal struck this week between Turkey and Russia. This halted Turkey’s military operation in north-east Syria, which was launched to drive the militias from the border region and establish the safe zone where around two million Syrian refugees are expected to be moved.

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The terms of the deal have been called a success for Turkey, while some claim that it did not go far enough. It did, though, allow for the Russian military police and Syrian border guards to enter parts of the safe zone when the ceasefire ended yesterday. They are there to “facilitate the removal of YPG elements and weapons to the depth of 30 km”, a move which is expected to be “finalised in 150 hours.”

Following that process, joint Turkish-Russian patrols are to be conducted in the east and west of the safe zone areas up to a depth of 10 km, apart from the city of Qamishli. Elements of the Kurdish YPG militia are then to be removed from the strategic towns of Manbij and Tal Rifat. The remaining terms of the deal were largely vague and consisted of general statements such as that of a “joint monitoring and verification mechanism” being established to oversee and implement the deal while working together to find a lasting political solution to the Syrian conflict.

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The deal was hailed as a success by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who said that the primary goals of the operation were achieved, namely that a “terror state” led by the YPG has not managed to establish itself along the Turkish-Syrian border and that Turkey’s national security remained intact. Many, however, have expressed dissatisfaction over the deal as it states that Turkey will only have a presence and access up to 10 km into the zone, based on the Adana agreement signed between Turkey and the Assad regime in 1988.

Cavusoglu swept aside that concern. “The Assad regime has no capacity to implement the 1998 Adana deal between Turkey and Syria,” he insisted, adding that Ankara does not have direct contacts with Damascus.