Moscow on Tuesday showed flexibility by offering Ankara an additional time limit, a day after extremist militants in Syria's Idlib province failed to meet an October 15 deadline and leave a demilitarized buffer zone created under a Russian-Turkish cease-fire deal.
"According to the information we are receiving from our military, the memorandum is being implemented and the military is satisfied with the way the Turkish side is working," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Under the deal, which prevented a bloody battle in the last remaining Syrian opposition-held stronghold last month, Turkey and Russia set up a buffer zone, and called on all heavy weapons and extremists to leave it by midnight on October 14.
However, the militants largely failed to comply with the agreement.
Peskov said: “Of course one cannot expect everything to go smoothly with absolutely no glitches, but the work is being carried out.”
For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that “on the second day of the second phase, we saw no implementation of the Putin-Erdogan agreement.”
The Observatory also said it did not monitor on Tuesday any withdrawal or patrols in the buffer area.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the Russian presidency “has invited Syrian President Bashar Assad to visit Russia, including Crimea.”
“The head of the Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, recently visited Damascus on the invitation of President Assad,” he said.
Separately, diplomats told Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday that Algeria's former Foreign Minister Ramtan Lamamra is being considered as one of the main candidates to succeed UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.
Western diplomats expected de Mistura to inform on Wednesday members of the UN Security Council about his intention to visit Damascus soon to discuss the issue of the “constitutional committee,” with hopes to return to the political process, based on the Geneva statement and Resolution 2254.
