Russia: US smuggling Syria’s oil, grain via ‘quasi-Kurdish state’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov makes a speech as he holds a press briefing at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, United Nations on April 25, 2023 [Selçuk Acar/Anadolu Agency]

The US is “creating a quasi-Kurdish state” in Syria to “smuggle oil and grains”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday,

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Lavrov briefed his Tunisian counterpart, Nabil Ammar, about the work that Russia, Turkiye and Iran are carrying out within the framework of the Astana peace talks to promote a Syrian settlement.

“We discussed political priorities based, among other things, on Syria’s return to the Arab League,” he added. “We noted serious ongoing economic issues in Syria that are caused by the illegitimate all-out Western sanctions.”

He stated that “the United States is effectively creating a quasi-Kurdish state on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River and engaging in smuggling Syrian oil and grain out of that country.”

READ: Black Sea grain corridor transported over 30.5m tons of grain

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.