- Ilya Petrenko, Russia Today in English. My colleagues haven't spoken about Syria yet. I'll ask a question about it. On the one hand, the success of Russia's counter-terrorist campaign in the region seems evident. Of course, not everyone agrees.
Vladimir Putin: Why "seems"? It's simply evident.
- Nevertheless, Donald Trump likes to say that it's the Americans who defeated the jihadists there. He stated this once again recently. As for your Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdoğan, before going to the United States of America to conduct negotiations with Trump, made an unexpected statement, saying that neither the USA nor Russia have successfully dealt with the terrorists there. He may have meant the Kurdish groups, however, as we know how the Turks treat them. But, anyway, what do you think, does Mr. Erdoğan have grounds to be dissatisfied with anything? And, regarding this, I'd like to ask you, what do you think, was every task that was set before the start of our counter-terrorist operation fulfilled? If it wasn't, what is there left to do? Thank you!
- First of all, regarding the United States' contribution in the fight against terrorism in Syria, they did contribute, I said frankly that I recognize it, including President Trump's contribution. Truth be told, before Russia came and took active participation, the so-called international coalition, had been practically treading water for several years. But the United States, in the framework of the campaign that was led by Trump already, they made a certain contribution to the joint effort to fight terrorism. Even though, I think, any neutral observer can look and see what Russia's role was, taking into account the intensity and the result of the warfare. After Russia started actively supporting the legal government in Damascus, almost 90% of the territory was liberated from the terrorists, and not just liberated but brought back under the control of, as I've said, the legal government of Syria. This is what we were aiming for. This is what we did.
As for Russia's interests, the main interest was to protect Russia against infiltration to the territory of the Russian Federation of many well-trained and well-prepared militants with combat experience under their belt. In this sense, we can't state that we have fulfilled 100% of the tasks. But in general, we have. We have completed the task we had at hand when starting the Syrian campaign. Now, after Syrian Border Guard Service officers were lined up along the border and we have more information about the camp inmates, we know that there are hundreds of militants who come from Russia, and several thousands of those who come from the CIS countries. How many did we destroy? No less, if not more. Therefore, yes, it's a universal problem any country faces the threat of infiltration of the militants from Syrian territory, of infiltration into other countries. It fully pertains to the European countries. We know tragic cases when the militants who have combat experience in Syria were used, when they organized attacks in some European countries. This threat applies to the USA. Nobody is safe. Therefore, we should join our efforts.
I hope that we will work together constructively. Speaking of which, we did gain some experience of a joint effort to fight terrorism with many countries, including the United States.
But we still have a lot of tasks at hand in the Idlib zone because there's a dense concentration of militants who flee to other countries, including Livia, by the way. We still have problems to solve. By "we" I mean everyone who is involved in solving the Syrian problem. There are still issues in the Euphrates region, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, where the militants still stay, and the foreign contingent, including the American one, still stays. I've said many times that we don't consider it to be legal,because these armed groups are there uninvited by Syria's government and don't act according to the resolution of the U.N. Security Council. It's an illegal presence. There's also the Al Tanf zone with the American military presence as well as the presence of a great number of militants, who basically hold the civilians hostage. They can't leave. People want to leave but they don't let them. They live in very bad conditions there. As soon as they manage to break free, they flee. Anything you can think of thrives there.
Therefore, in general, yes, we have completed many tasks but far from every task at hand. But I really hope that, in the course of the development of the political process in Geneva, during the work to amend and to adopt a new constitution in Syria, we will manage to, in one way or another, to deescalate the situation, we'll manage to reconcile the government and the opposition, and to reach cardinal, universal solutions that would settle the situation in the country in general and restore its territorial integrity completely.
As for President Erdoğan, we are in close contact with him. I know that he is concerned about some organizations. But in the last phone conversation, we agreed that, taking into account the level of our cooperation, the Turks will inform their Russian colleagues of their concerns regarding these or those situations in the zone that is of special interest to Turkey on an operative level. If we actually see any violations, we are ready to react urgently.
