MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th September, 2018) Armenia and Russia will carry out a joint humanitarian mission in Syria, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
"I can already declare officially that the Republic of Armenia will carry out a humanitarian mission in Syria, Aleppo, and the main goal of the mission will be to provide help to Aleppo's Armenian community and to Syria in general. I am happy that our countries [Armenia and Russia] have made this joint decision, and the representatives of the Armenian Defense Ministry's humanitarian mission will act under the flag of the Republic of Armenia," Pashinyan told reporters.
He expressed hope that other representatives of the international community would also engage in the Russian-Armenian mission.
"Armenia is especially interested in this issue, as there is an Armenian community in Syria, and it is especially large in Aleppo. We consider it important to provide humanitarian aid. In this case, we're talking about humanitarian mine clearance and health care delivery," Pashinyan said.
He pointed out that this would be an exclusively humanitarian mission, with no military component.
Before the crisis broke out in Syria, the Armenian community was considered as one of the country's largest diasporas, as it included around 110,000 people, with most of them living in the province of Aleppo and in the country's capital of Damascus. However, over 90,000 Armenians have reportedly left Syria since the beginning of the civil war.
In October 2017, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said that the country had accepted over 22,000 Syrian citizens since the beginning of the conflict.
