Russian Federation propose ceasefire in Syria as 50000 flee Aleppo fighting

Lavrov said Russian Federation had made a “quite specific” proposal and “we will wait for the American response before we take it” to the larger group dealing with Syria.

Beyond that, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the ongoing Russian strikes – which the United States and its allies claim have targeted not only ISIS, but other opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government despite assurances otherwise – have hurt efforts to “have a serious conversation” on peacefully resolving the conflict.

Brett McGurk, the Obama administration’s point-man for defeating the Islamic State, said Russia’s Aleppo offensive was having the perverse effect of helping the extremists by drawing local fighters away from the battle against IS and to the war against Syria’s government.

“These gains have been too slow to come and too limited”, U.S. Representative Ed Royce, the panel’s Republican chairman, said. The defense ministry rejected accusations of targeting residential areas of Aleppo, arguing that the footage of the aftermath of the airstrikes there that Western media have been broadcasting was filmed long before Russian Federation began carrying out airstrikes in Syria last September.

Speaking for the group, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the results but noted they were “commitments on paper”.

Germany is among European countries seeking diplomatic progress after taking in more than 1 million refugees a year ago, about half of them from Syria.

In London, meanwhile, top Syrian opposition figure Riad Hijab said the opposition would not attend a scheduled round of indirect peace talks in Geneva on February 25 unless the Russian-Syrian bombardment stops, sieges on rebel-held areas are lifted and detainees are freed. Clearly the USA never had any intention of going to war with Russian Federation to save rebel factions who had no real chance of winning to begin with. He urged Moscow to “create an atmosphere within which you can actually have a negotiation”.

“We are seeing new types of injuries due to Russian airstrikes”, said Mahmoud Mustafa, director of the Independent Doctors Association, a Turkish-based Syrian group that runs a field hospital in Bab al-Salama on the Syrian side of the main border crossing north of the Aleppo, near the town of Azaz.

“Obviously it’s been hard”, Kerry said.

A truce is seen as critical to resuscitating peace talks between Assad’s government and the opposition.

Kerry started Thursday’s meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and the two were scheduled to join other members of the so-called International Syria Support Group, a collection of 20 nations working on the conflict.

The United States sees the PYD as a useful ally in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, but Ankara views it as a terrorist group with deep ideological and logistical links to Kurdish militants fighting in its own southeast.

“How can we trust you?”

Asked how soon a ceasefire could be put in place, a Russian diplomat who declined to be identified said: “Maybe March, I think so”.

It is unclear if a female fighter is driving the vehicle but it demonstrates the willingness of the Kurdish female fighters to be at the heart of the People’s Protection Units’ (YPG) battle for territory in northern Syria.

“The process is very fragile, discussions are under way, one can’t speak about unanimity in the process of a Syrian settlement”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call.