OREANDA-NEWS. RIA Novosti information agency reported that the Russian Defense Ministry intends to deploy additional military police forces in Syria.

“Two military police battalions will be deployed to Syria in a week,” the journalists’ interlocutor said. According to him, 276 military policemen and 33 units of military hardware will be sent there.

The plans for the transfer of additional units of the Russian military police to Syria became known after the presidents of Russia and Turkey agreed on joint patrolling at a distance of 10 kilometers from the border to the west and east of the area of military operation Peace Spring.

On October 23, Igor Seritsky, the representative of the command of the Russian group of forces in Syria, said that the military police began patrolling territories in the north-east of the country. Russian Ministry of Defense published a map of Syria, which indicates the areas in which the joint Russian and Turkish patrols will operate.

On the same day, the Defense Minister of Russia Sergey Shoygu stated that Russian military police and Syrian border guards guarantee the safety of civilians in a 30 kilometer zone along the border of Syria and Turkey, so there is no need for residents of this territory to leave their homes.

Earlier, the US President Donald Trump said that there will be a small number of military forces in Syria “in the area where they have the oil”. According to the Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov, the presence of US military in Syria is illegitimate. “Only Russian units are deployed on a legitimate basis in Syria at the request of the Syrian leadership. And the ultimate goal is, of course, the complete withdrawal of any foreign armed forces… from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic,” Peskov said on October 24.