Russia seeks negotiations with U.S. for full rebel withdrawal from Aleppo


The rebels who hold the besieged eastern half of Aleppo, Syria, have lost more than half of the territory they once controlled to forces loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime and its Russian allies. In the face of these regime advances, the opposition groups have been quietly negotiating with Russia in neighboring Turkey, so far with little effect.
On Saturday, Moscow announced it is ready to deal with the United States, which backs some of the militants fighting Assad, to arrange a full withdrawal of Syrian rebel forces from Aleppo. "We are immediately ready to send out military experts, diplomats to Geneva in order to agree [on] mutual actions with our American colleagues to ensure the pullout of all the rebels without exclusion from eastern Aleppo," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Rebel leaders in Aleppo have reportedly sworn they will not leave the city, and Washington has yet to respond to Moscow's invitation to talks.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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