ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

AFP PHOTO / BULENT KILIC Originally appeared at TASS The United States is hampering the arrival of any representatives of humanitarian organizations and the UN mission to Raqqa in Syria, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Saturday. “The US is continuing to hamper the arrival of any representatives of humanitarian organizations to Raqqa, let alone the agreement on the arrival of the UN mission to the city, which should register the scale of the humanitarian disaster in order to determine the amount of emergency humanitarian assistance to the remaining population,” the Defense Ministry said. According to the Defense Ministry, “the United States, Great Britain and the countries of the “coalition” that intensively worked for the faster adoption of UN Security Council resolution 2401, are now completely ignoring the fulfillment of their own obligations in Syria.” On February 24, 2018, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2401 on establishing a ceasefire in Syria for a

The substance used in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal may have originated from the countries studying the “Novichok” nerve agent, including the UK, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Sweden, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “The most likely source of origin of the toxin are the countries which have been carrying out intense research on the substances from the ‘Novichok’ program, approximately since the end of the 1990s until the present time, and this project is not the creation of Russia or the Soviet Union,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday. She listed the UK, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Sweden among the countries involved. The US should also “be put under question,” Zakharova said in an interview with the state broadcaster VGTRK. “How did they come to the conclusion about a Russian ‘footprint’ if they didn’t give us those samples? Logically they shouldn’t have this substance. Which samples have they compared with to draw such a conclusion?” s

On March 17, a convoy of the Turkish Army, consisting of 100 armored vehicles, bulldozers and trucks, entered the town of Andan, only 7km north of Aleppo city, according to Syrian opposition sources. The Syrian pro-opposition news outlet Enab Baladi and the Turkish Anadolu Agency confirmed that Turkish Army convoy will establish a new observation post in Anadan to monitor the de-esclation zone in Aleppo governorate. The Turkish Army established three similar observation posts  in the town of al-Eis  in the southwestern Aleppo countryside and the villages of  Tell Tuqan  and  Sarman  in the southern Idlib countryside in February. Turkey will likely establish even more observation posts in Idlib and Aleppo governorates in upcoming months. According to Tukey’s Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin,  Russia and Turkey have agreed to establish twelve observation posts in northern Syria during the Astana talks . Anadolu Agency reported that the Russian forces will position themselv