Moscow and Damascus have issued a joint statement, in which they condemned the prolonged U.S. military presence in Syria and demanded an immediate withdrawal. The joint statement read: “We call on the United States, whose military units are on Syrian territory illegally, to leave the country.”
The call came after Washington retracted President Trump’s decision to pull all American military personnel from out of Syria. Instead, the United States will leave about 400 U.S. troops in two different regions of Syria. Both areas are relatively close to one another, and are considered by military strategists to be of high value to Washington’s declared Mideast policy. They are located adjacent to Syria’s borders with Jordan and Iraq, not far from a supply route where Iranian weapons are frequently smuggled into Syria.