‘Russia Won’t Cooperate With US on Syrian Oil Fields’

By Staff, Agencies

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin announces Moscow’s refusal of cooperation with Washington on controlling and exploiting the oilfields in Syria, because they belong to the war-ravaged Arab country and its people.

“We won’t cooperate with the Americans on the Syrian oil. This concerns Syrian oil, which is the Syrian people’s heritage,” TASS news agency quoted Vershinin as saying on Wednesday.

“We are convinced that it’s up to the Syrian people to manage their natural resources, including oil.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Vershinin said that US actions to bolster its ‘illegal presence’ in Syria violate international law.

“Any actions whatsoever – we are not talking about anything in particular now – that the United States undertake to keep themselves militarily present in Syria are unacceptable and illegal from our point of view and under international law,” he said.

Moscow basically slams Washington’s illegal presence in Syria amid reports that the US is building two military bases in the Arab country’s oil-rich east.

The remarks came shortly after Turkish media reported that two new American military bases are under construction in Syria’s oil-rich northeastern province of Deir Ez-Zor.

Also on Tuesday, Syrian government forces reportedly entered an oilfield in the country’s northeastern province of Hasakah, as they continue to deploy in areas close to the border with Turkey in the face of a cross-border incursion by Turkish army troops and their allied militants against militants from the Kurdish People's Protection Units [YPG].

Several media outlets reported on Tuesday that Syrian army troops had gone into the Rumailan oilfield, located near the village of Mulla Abbas, “for the first time in years.”

Syrian government forces entered Rumailan oilfield in the country’s northeastern province of Hasakah after seven years.

Relatively, Washington has reversed an earlier decision to pull out all troops from northeastern Syria, announcing last week the deployment of about 500 troops to the oilfields controlled by Kurdish forces.