“Your friends and homeland await you,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told his soldiers at Russia’s Khmeimim air base in northern Syria on Monday. It was great news for the soldiers, advisers and pilots who had “completed the mission of fighting terror in Syria,” as Putin put it. But these soldiers don’t yet know when they can start packing, and mainly, how many of them will get to leave.

Does Putin plan to withdraw his forces as part of the diplomatic efforts being made in Geneva, or does he plan to leave them in Syria until he knows the results of the talks from which the regime’s people pulled out and then returned on Sunday? And will Russia end its oversight of the de-escalation areas (security zones) in southern and central Syria, or will these missions continue as per the guidelines agreed on with the United States, Iran and Turkey?

In his announcement, Putin didn’t detail the conditions for the troop withdrawal, its scope or date, so one can assume that the plan isn’t to totally abandon Syria but to partly reduce the Russian presence. The critical areas, like supervising the security zones and the country’s eastern border, will continue as usual. A week from Thursday the forum on the security zones is scheduled to convene in Astana, the Kazakh capital, to discuss inspection arrangements and how to divide responsibility between Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Read the full article at Haaretz.