Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in December that Ankara was ready to launch a military operation against Kurdish fighters on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River as well as in Syria’s Manbij, located near the Turkish border, if the United States did not remove the militia from there.
Moscow hopes that Damascus and the Kurds will manage to find a solution regarding the eastern bank of the Euphrates that would guarantee Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Russian Ambassador to Damascus Alexander Yefimov told Sputnik in an interview.
The statements come after Kurdish militia units in January blocked a convoy of humanitarian aid sent by the Syrian authorities to the city of Hajin located on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, forcing the vehicles to turn around.