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Lavrov: Russian-Turkish agreement allowed Syria to expand control over its territory

On October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Sochi to agree on a ten-provision memorandum on joint operations to control the situation in northeastern Syria

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. The Sochi memorandum of understanding inked by Russia and Turkey has allowed the Syrian government to have a broader control over the country’s territory, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday at the Mediterranean Dialogues (MED) conference held in Rome.

"I believe that this has considerably stabilized the situation. As a minimum, it helped the legitimate Syrian government to considerably expand control over their own territory," he said.

On October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Sochi to agree on a ten-provision memorandum on joint operations to control the situation in northeastern Syria. Under the agreement, Russian military police and Syrian border guards were deployed to Syrian territories outside the zone of Turkey’s Peace Spring operation. They are tasked to facilitate the withdrawal of Kurdish units to a distance of 30 kilometers of the Syrian-Turkish border. The first joint patrol mission was conducted east of the Euphrates on November 1.

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Sergey Lavrov Syria Turkey

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