Kurdish forces retreat from the border of Turkey and Syria

1 Syria

The head of the Center for the Reconciliation of the warring parties, Major-General Sergey Romanenko, announced that the Russian military police started to pull the Kurdish self-defense forces, and their weapons, for 30 kilometers away the Syrian-Turkish border. Russia acts in accordance with the memorandum of understanding between Moscow and Ankara, which was signed by the presidents of Russia and Turkey, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Sochi on 22nd of October. The Russian forces operate outside of the Turkish operation “Source of Peace”. The withdrawal of the Kurdish forces will last until 18:00 on Tuesday. After that, a joint Russian-Turkish patrol 10 kilometers deep from the border to the west and the east of the operation area, except for the city of Kamyshly, will take place. All the Kurdish forces must also leave Manbij and Tal Rifat.

2 Iraq

The Iraqi President Barham Saleh, a former prime minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan, spoke about the doubts of the US allies about the reliability of the US. He also didn’t exclude a possibility of «reconfiguration» of the Baghdad’s relations with Russia and Iran. According to the Iraqi president — “The US allies are concerned about the reliability of the US» — TASS reports. During an interview to the »Axios» news agency, Barham Saleh didn’t rule out that the withdrawal of the US forces from the Middle East could lead to a “reconfiguration” of Baghdad’s relations with Russia and Iran. During last week, Iraq demanded the withdrawal of the US troops coming from Syria.

3 Russia — France

The Vice Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Peter Tolstoy, sent an appeal to the PACE President, Liliane Mori Pasquier. He asked her to ponder about a mechanism for the responces to the violations of the Council of Europe Charter — RIA NEWS reports. During the autumn session of the PACE, the Secretary of State at the French Foreign Ministry, Amelie de Monschalen, proposed to make a mechanism, aimed to hold the states accountable for a violation of the Charter of the Council of Europe. The accountability mechanism may include sanctions. The head of the Russian delegation to the Assembly believes that this mechanism of a responce to the violations of the principles of the Council of Europe can’t be discussed in a short time — it should not become a tool to deal with the unwanted delegations.

4 Syria

The Kurdish forces left their military base with a training camp, and the Asaish checkpoint in north of Rakka, near the city of Ain Issa — RIA NEWS reports. The base is located near the M4 highway, west of the abandoned refugee camp in Ain Issa. The command of the Kurdish-Arab coalition «Syrian Democratic Forces» announced the achievement of an agreement with Russia on the withdrawal of their forces from the Syrian-Turkish border, in accordance with the Sochi memorandum. «The Syrian democratic forces are redeploying to the new positions in north-east of Syria, thus moving away from the Turkish-Syrian border, in accordance with the provisions of the memorandum, in order to stop the bloodshed and protect the inhabitants of the region from the Turkish attacks» — the report explained.