Erdoğan and Putin hold face-to-face talks

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for their first face-to-face talks since the pandemic in which they discussed the future of the last pocket of Syria outside regime control.

Putin, who made only a passing reference to Syria in his opening comments, said that “negotiations with Turkey are sometimes difficult” but that the two countries had learned “how to find compromises that are beneficial to both sides”.

Syria’s 10-year-old civil war has left hundreds of thousands dead and displaced more than half of the prewar population.

The end of endless war or expansion of illegal occupation?