As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Moscow on an official visit, several thousand Syrians yesterday demonstrated in the northwestern city of Idlib, on the 12th anniversary of the start of peaceful protests calling for the overthrow of the regime. before it turned into a bloody conflict, reaffirming its opposition to any “normalization” with Damascus. The conflict enters its thirteenth year, burdened by more than half a million deaths and tens of thousands of missing and displaced people, as President Bashar al-Assad holds official talks in Moscow on Wednesday, and his regime has enjoyed widespread solidarity since the devastating earthquake that hit the country and neighboring Turkey last month.
In the city of Idlib, one of the main cities still outside the control of government forces, hundreds of Syrians, young and old, successively took to the main square, carrying the flags of the Syrian opposition.
On the facade of the building overlooking the demonstration square, two banners were raised: the first in Arabic read: “The people want the fall of the regime,” and the second in English: “Freedom and dignity for all Syrians.”
This year’s celebration of the uprising comes more than a month after the devastating earthquake in Syria that killed about 6,000 people across the country and exacerbated the suffering of the population, after years of war that destroyed infrastructure and drained the economy.
In Moscow, Assad is negotiating with President Vladimir Putin at the height of relations between Syria and the countries of the Middle East. Russia is one of the most important allies of the Syrian government, along with Iran, and has provided him with diplomatic and economic support since the conflict began in 2011 and defended it on international forums. The Russian military intervention in Syria since September 2015 has changed the balance of power in the conflict in favor of the Syrian army.
The Kremlin statement said that Bashar and Putin will discuss cooperation in the areas of politics, trade and aid, “in addition to the prospects for a comprehensive settlement of the situation in and around Syria.”
Russia launched a military campaign in Syria in 2015 that helped turn the tide of the war in Assad’s favor with heavy air strikes against opposition-held areas, a campaign that helped Assad regain much of the territory he had lost to the opposition that sought to overthrow him, and since then Moscow has expanded its military installations in the country, establishing a permanent airbase at Khmeimim in Latakia province.
The naval base in the Mediterranean port city of Tartus also became the only permanent port for the Russian fleet outside the former Soviet Union.
Western intelligence sources say Russia’s costly war in Ukraine has forced it to move some of its assets out of Syria, despite Moscow still having the strongest foothold in the country south of NATO.