LONDON: Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday Russia did not know how the situation in Syria would evolve in terms of the country maintaining its territorial integrity, the Interfax news agency reported, according to Reuters.
“We don’t know how the situation is going to develop on the question of whether it is possible to keep Syria as a single country,” the agency quoted Ryabkov as telling Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.
Meanwhile, a British MP told Arab News that the Kurds of northern Syria face an “exponential threat” from Turkey while Western allies in the fight against Daesh remain “silent.”
Speaking after visiting the Kurdish region of northern Syria, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, an MP for the opposition Labor party, said Kurdish communities in the area “feel abandoned” by the West in a “moment of real need.”
Traveling via Baghdad and Irbil, before being escorted across the Syrian border by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), his delegation, which undertook the visit independently of the Labour Party, witnessed the devastation wreaked by Daesh and Turkish rockets in Kobani and other cities.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish president, has vowed to expand the offensive to other YPG-held areas, citing security concerns in response to US plans to help Kurdish militias create a 30,000-strong “border security force” to defend the Syrian-Turkish border against Daesh.
Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it defines as a terrorist organization.
