
MOSCOW,(ST)-The First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Andrey Denisov has asserted that Russia is not planning to evacuate its citizens from Syria, denying the fact that the issue of transferring Russian ladies and children on board of the Russian Emergency Ministry airplanes is related to the bad circumstances in the country.
In a statement quoted by the Russia today website, Denisov said that the airplanes of the Russian Emergency Ministry headed originally to transport a load of humanitarian aid, medicine and food stuff to Syria according to a Syrian official demand. “As the airplanes arrived the country there were some people want to leave the country with their children , so we expressed our readiness to transport them”, Denisov said, confirming that there are no talks about comprehensive evacuation.
A source affiliated to the Russian Embassy in Damascus has recently announced that these airplanes will today transfer about hundred Russian citizens in Syria according to their demand. “ There are ongoing talks just about transporting people who want to travel freely to Moscow, especially those whom their houses are destroyed”, the source added.
“People who will fly to Moscow today are from the Russian permanent residents in Syria not from members of the Russian Diplomatic Commission working in the country”, the source pointed out.
The Russian diplomatic source asserted that the direct air flights between Moscow and Damascus are regular and incessant at an average of two flights a week.
Inas Abdulkareem