Russia will continue with military supplies to Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies yesterday.
Moscow has come under increased international pressure in recent days over what Washington and Gulf states say is a Russian military build-up in Syria, where the Kremlin has been supporting President Bashar al-Assad in a four-and-a-half-year war.
“There were military supplies, they are ongoing and they will continue. They are inevitably accompanied by Russian specialists, who help to adjust the equipment, to train Syrian personnel how to use these weaponry,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is travelling to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting later this month, plans to address the assembly on the topics of Syria, the conflict in Ukraine, the state of the global economy and sanctions against Russia.
“He [Putin] will touch specific aspects, such as Syria, the Ukraine crisis. All these crises arise from systemic problems regarding attempts to freeze the process of forming polycentric world,” Lavrov said. The US and its allies oppose Assad, whose government has been fighting an array of insurgent groups, including hardline Sunni Islamist militants, Islamic State. A US-led coalition is conducting air strikes on Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Moscow says its military assistance to the Syrian army is in line with international law and that Russian servicemen, including military experts, have been present inside Syria for many years, including before the start of the war.
The Syrian civil war in which around 250,000 people have died has caused nearly half Syria’s pre-war 23 million strong population to flee, with many thousands attempting to reach Europe.
All these crises arise from systemic problems regarding attempts to freeze process of forming polycentric world
Russia is under Western sanctions due to its role in a conflict in Ukraine between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Putin granted Russian citizenship to Roy Jones Junior, a prominent US professional boxer who had asked for it last month when he met Putin in the disputed region of Crimea.
The move is the latest example of the Kremlin publicising cases of prominent Westerners who praise Russia or offer symbolic support for Putin’s policies, at a time when Putin is at odds with Western governments over the Ukraine crisis.
A short presidential decree on the Kremlin website said Jones’ request had been granted under an article of the constitution giving the president power to solve questions of Russian citizenship. Jones, a former Olympic silver medalist and winner of multiple world championship titles, met Putin in August in Crimea, the region that Russia annexed from Ukraine last year, where Jones appeared as a guest on a boxing television show.
In televised comments, the boxer told Putin that a Russian passport would make it easier for him to travel to Russia and that he hoped he could “build a bridge” between Russia and the US. Jones is not the first Russophile Western celebrity to have been granted citizenship by Putin.
French actor Gerard Depardieu made headlines in 2013 when he became a Russian citizen in similar fashion. Depardieu has often praised Putin, including his policies in Crimea, as a result of which he has been banned from travelling to Ukraine. Putin was in Crimea again on Saturday to meet his old friend Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, who has also often defended Putin’s policies.
In July, Italian newspaper La Stampa quoted Berlusconi as saying that Putin had offered him Russian citizenship and wanted to make him economy minister.