ICC must be allowed to carry out work ‘without intimidation’, say 93 member states

The Guardian, Harry Davies, Sat 15 Jun 2024

Joint statement of support for international criminal court issued following revelations of Israeli interference 

The international criminal court has been the subject of efforts by Israel and its intelligence
agencies to undermine, influence and intimidate. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP

The international criminal court must be allowed to carry out its work “without intimidation”, a group of 93 states has said in a significant public intervention intended to reinforce support for the judicial body. 

In a joint statement issued late on Friday issued late on Friday, the large group of ICC member states vowed to defend the institution and “preserve its integrity from any political interference and pressure against the court, its officials and those cooperating with it”. 

The show of unity for the court and its staff comes in the wake of revelations published by the Guardian about efforts by Israel and its intelligence agencies to undermine, influence and intimidate the court as part of a nine-year campaign of surveillance and espionage. 

It also follows recent warnings by the office of the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, that it has been subjected to “several forms of threats” and hostile intelligence activity apparently intended to interfere with and improperly influence the prosecutor’s work. 

Last month, Khan announced that he has filed applications for arrest warrants against senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which he alleged had been committed during Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defence minister, Yoav Gallant, is the first time an ICC prosecutor has taken such action against the leaders of a close western ally. The move provoked a fierce response from Israel and its allies in the US. 

The statement supporting the ICC was drafted by five of the court’s member states – Belgium, Chile, Jordan, Senegal and Slovenia – and is understood to have been presented to the rest of the court’s state parties last week for their endorsement. 

A diplomatic source familiar with the effort said the disclosures about Israeli intelligence operations against the court had been “really eye-opening for a lot of diplomats” and “made some realise that it’s time to put out some sort of statement from the states that belong to the court responding to what has now come to light”. 

However, they said the statement was also a response to other recent forms of hostile activity against the ICC, such as a cyber-attack last year, and came as the prosecutor is conducting an investigation into senior Russian political and military figures allegedly involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. 

“The court is going after some very powerful people, not just in the Palestine investigation, and it’s time to send a message that the state parties are there to defend it,” the source said. 

Longtime ICC observers said it was notable that major western powers such as Germany, France, Canada and the UK had supported the statement, which called on “all states to ensure full cooperation with the court for it to carry out its important mandate”. 

They also pointed to the large number of endorsing states – 93 of the ICC’s 124 members – and noted that previous statements rallying around the court had not garnered as much support. 

“This is a unique moment of international solidarity, with 93 ICC states parties standing up for global justice and accountability for mass atrocities,” Danya Chaikel, the International Federation for Human Rights’s representative to the ICC, said. 

“They are collectively opposing the egregious threats to the court from powerful countries including Israel, the US and Russia, and strongly rejecting their efforts to manipulate the rule of law for political gains,” she added.

US designates Russia's Wagner military group an intl 'criminal organization'

Yahoo - AFP, January 20, 2023 

The United States on Friday designated Russia's Wagner group as a "transnational criminal organization," raising pressure on the private Russian army fighting in Ukraine. 

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wagner, controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to President Vladimir Putin, has about 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, 80 percent of them drawn from prisons. 

Kirby showed US intelligence photographs of North Korea supplying arms to Wagner for its Ukraine operations, and said the private army has become a rival to the formal Russian military. 

The photographs, from November 18-19, show Russian rail cars entering North Korea, picking up a load of infantry rockets and missiles, and returning to Russia, he said. 

He said the US Treasury was formally designating Wagner as a transnational criminal organization, putting it in league with Italian mafia groups and Japanese and Russian organized crime. 

The designation will allow the wider application of sanctions on the group’s sprawling global network, which includes mercenary operations as well as businesses in Africa and elsewhere. 

Wagner "is a criminal organization that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses," Kirby said. 

"We will work relentlessly to identify, disrupt, expose and target those who are assisting Wagner," he said. 

Kirby also said the United States had presented its intelligence on Wagner's North Korean purchase to the UN Security Council's unit on North Korea sanctions. 

The arms transfers from North Korea are in direct violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, Kirby said. 

Kirby said there is evidence that Prigozhin's confidence in Wagner fighters' relative success in Ukraine has generated tensions in the Kremlin. 

"Wagner is becoming a rival power center to the Russian military and other Russian ministries," Kirby said. 

"Prigozhin is trying to advance his own interest in Ukraine and Wagner is making military decisions based largely on what they will generate for Prigozhin, in terms of positive publicity."

UN satellite analysis tracks Ukraine cultural damage

Yahoo – AFP, October 26, 2022 

The United Nations is using before-and-after satellite imagery to monitor the cultural destruction inflicted by Russia's war in Ukraine, announcing Wednesday it will launch its tracking platform publicly within days. 

The UN's culture agency UNESCO said it had verified damage to 207 cultural sites in Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24. 

They include 88 religious sites, 15 museums, 76 buildings of historical and or artistic interest, 18 monuments and 10 libraries. 

"Our conclusion is it's bad, and it may continue to get even worse," UNESCO's cultural and emergencies director Krista Pikkat told reporters at a briefing in Geneva. 

So far in the war, none of the seven world heritage sites have been damaged. 

UNESCO -- the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -- has joined forces with the UN Satellite Centre UNOSAT. 

Based on reports on the ground, UNESCO sends a list of potentially damaged sites to UNOSAT. It then asks for satellite images from commercial suppliers and a small team of experts studies the difference in before-and-after pictures. 

The team matches up the images and is then able to give a time window in which the damage took place. 

It does not attribute blame for the damage. 

"This is a kind of pilot experiment to see how we can usefully compile this information, and possibly in the long term, the ambition would be to widen the scope beyond Ukraine and take the tool to a global level so we can really have a kind of real-time, interactive tool for our experts," said Pikkat. 

UNESCO is also working with museums and collections in Ukraine to try to combat against the threat of looting -- a common problem in war. 

UNESCO has been discussing with Kyiv about possibly removing cultural heritage items from the country for the duration of the war, but Pikkat acknowledged that it was a "difficult call", with the first move being to evacuate collections to safer parts of Ukraine.

Pope urges UN reform after Ukraine war, Covid ‘limits’

Dgital Journal – AFP, October 16, 2022 

Pope Francis in his new book called for the reform of the UN after the pandemic
and the Ukraine war showed its 'limits' - Copyright AFP

Pope Francis said the need to reform the United Nations was “more than obvious” after the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war exposed its limits, in an extract of his new book published Sunday. 

The Argentine pontiff said Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine highlighted the need to ensure the current multilateral structure — especially the UN Security Council — finds “more agile and effective ways of resolving conflicts”. 

“In wartime, it is essential to affirm that we need more multilateralism and a better multilateralism,” but the UN is no longer fit for “new realities”, he added in an extract published by La Stampa daily. 

The organisation was founded to prevent the horrors of two World Wars from happening again, but although the threat represented by those conflicts was still alive, “today’s world is no longer the same”, said Francis. 

“The necessity of these reforms became more than obvious after the pandemic” when the current multilateral system “showed all its limits”, he added. 

Francis denounced the unequal distribution of vaccines as a “glaring example” of the law of the strongest prevailing over solidarity. 

The 85-year-old advocated “organic reforms” aimed at allowing international organisations to rediscover their essential purpose of “serving the human family” and said international institutions must be the result of the “widest possible consensus”. 

The pope also proposed guaranteeing food, health, economic and social rights on which international institutions would base their decisions. 

Francis’s new book, “I ask you in the name of God: Ten prayers for a future of hope”, is due to come out in Italy Tuesday. 

In rare hearing, Pentagon reports rise in UFOs in past 20 years

Yahoo – AFP, May 17, 2022

A screen grab provided by the Pentagon in April 2020 from a video showing
"unidentified aerial phenomena" (AFP/Handout) (Handout)

An increasing number of unidentified flying objects have been reported in the sky over the past 20 years, a top US defense official told lawmakers Tuesday in the first public hearing on UFOs in half a century. 

"Since the early 2000s we have seen an increasing number of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft or objects in military controlled training areas and training ranges and other designated airspace," Scott Bray, deputy director of Naval intelligence, told a House security panel. 

Bray attributed the rise to efforts by the US military to "destigmatize the act of reporting sights and encounters" as well as to technological advances. 

However, he said the Pentagon had detected nothing "that would suggest it's anything non-terrestrial in origin" behind these phenomena. 

On the other hand, Brey also did not definitively rule out that possibility. 

"We've made no assumptions about what this is or isn't," Bray said. 

In June 2021, US intelligence had already claimed in a long-awaited report that there was no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrials in the skies, while acknowledging that they had no explanation for dozens of phenomena observed by military pilots. 

Some could be explained by the presence of drones or birds creating confusion in the radar systems of the US military. 

Others could stem from tests of military equipment or technologies carried out by other powers, such as China or Russia. 

The US military and intelligence are primarily interested in determining whether these aerial objects may be linked to threats against the United States. 

"Unidentified Aerial Phenomena are a potential national security threat. And they need to be treated that way," said Democratic Representative Andre Carson of Indiana, who was chairing the panel holding the hearing.

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"The Big Picture - You Are Not Alone" -  Feb 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"Common Questions from Non-Lightworkers" - Feb 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"... Question Three: Is there life on other planets?

Are you kidding? There's life everywhere. Everywhere! Right now, your scientists are searching for microbial life on all the planets and their moons in your solar system, and they will eventually find it. They expect to find it. They will eventually understand that the seeds of life are everywhere.

How much life might there be? How long has it been "out there"? When science starts to realize the scope of how long life has been in your galaxy, they will begin to see something counterintuitive to evolution - their own Human history. How old is your Universe? Ask your scientists and they will say about 13 billion years. That's OK. Let's use their numbers. How old is your own planet - 4 or 5 billion, perhaps? Correct. But how old is humanity? Why weren't you here with the dinosaurs? You think the earth wasn't ready? Do you think that perhaps that which controls evolution was a little too stupid to make a Human sooner, but the process could make a dinosaur? Have you ever thought about these things?

If you put the earth's entire history into a 24-hour clock, life itself only started in the last hour and humanity, all of civilization, happened the last few seconds. Isn't that odd to you? Therefore, in a Universe that may be 13 billion years old, you arrived in the last few seconds. Did you ever think maybe you're the newest ones on the block? Well, you'd be right.

If the Universe is really that old, do you think perhaps there are civilizations in your galaxy that might be a billion or more years older than you? If that's the case, do you think perhaps they have gone through anything you're going through? Do you think any of them might have had your DNA attributes? Perhaps they also went through what you are going through spiritually? Perhaps they even went into a quantum ascension status? The answer is dozens of them.

You already know them and you've listed them in your publications. The ones who directly seeded you are called Pleiadians. The ones who seeded them might be Octurian and the ones who seeded them may be even Orion. They're everywhere, and they're all here as well. They're looking at you, for you are the ones who are next, and you are passing this marker of the shift.

Oh, dear ones, it's going to be a long time before you really know any of these things to be your reality. The first step is peace on Earth. The next is a new kind of Human evolution that is going to increase your DNA efficiency to 100% and you're going to live a long time. Every time I say that, there are Humans in their intellectual mind saying, "Well, there is a geometric birth rate going on. We're not going to make it. It's going to over-crowd and we are going to run out of food. So what you're saying, Kryon, can't be a good thing. We're all going to be suffering and killing each other for food."

Let me address this, for if that is your thought, Human, you are assuming Humans are stupid and haven't figured out what's going on and why there's so much birth. You assume they can't control it because they haven't figured it out? I want to tell you, you're going to see something you didn't expect. You're going to see a decline in birth rate because Humans are smart and they're getting smarter. They're going to see that quality of life is linked to the number of children they have, and they're going to figure out the solution. It won't be how many children their church says they should have. They are going to do it intuitively. You're going to see it sooner than not.

You are going to see wisdom on the planet in many areas that no sociologist would ever have predicted. You will surprise them all, and it's going to happen without a government program. It's going to happen because you decide you want it. It's going to happen collectively, and you may even see it soon. Look for negative birth rates in first-world countries. Where Humans are able to see a larger picture and have freedom of information, the situation will not be what you have predicted.

Is there life on other planets? The scientists are saying, "It's going to be a long time before we get to the stars, you know? We have to get in this little metal can and put air in it, and then travel in it for years and years before we ever get to the next star." Meanwhile, a Pleiadian can do it in the blink of an eye! What do you think is going on there? Do you even believe me?

Not long ago, if you wanted to communicate to someone far away, you sent a letter. It was carried by a horse. It took a month to get a response. Now you communicate instantly!  Why is this so unbelievable to you about travel?

I will tell you, as long as you stay in 3D, you'll still be getting in little metal cans and air suits and going to planets. As soon as you begin the quantum age, however, you will simply wish yourself there, because you will be entangled with everything and can go with intent. If you don't believe this now, you will later, for what I give you is true. It may be lifetimes and lifetimes from now, but the group that is before me is the group that is going to come back over and over and over. The difference is that you're done coming back in an old energy. This is a new energy. ..”

Kalush Orchestra - Stefania (Official Video Eurovision 2022)

Pink Floyd release first new song since 1994 for Ukraine

Yahoo – AFP, April 7, 2022 

David Gilmour: 'We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile
act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people
murdered by one of the world's major powers' (AFP/JOHN D MCHUGH) (JOHN D MCHUGH)

Pink Floyd have written their first new song in almost 30 years to support Ukrainians, the band announced on Thursday. 

"Hey, Hey, Rise-Up!" will be released on Friday, and be used to raise funds for humanitarian causes linked to the war. 

It samples Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from one of Ukraine's biggest bands BoomBox, singing in Sofiyskaya Square in Kyiv in a clip that went viral. 

Khlyvnyukh abandoned a world tour to return to Ukraine and help defend his country. 

"We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world's major powers," Pink Floyd said on their official Twitter feed. 

In a press release, band leader David Gilmour said he had been moved by Khlyvnyuk's video: "It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music." 

He was able to speak with Khlyvnyuk from his hospital bed in Kyiv, where the singer was recovering after being hit by shrapnel in a mortar attack, the record company said. 

"I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future," Gilmour said. 

The image accompanying the song is of a sunflower, and was inspired by a viral video showing a Ukrainian woman insulting two armed Russian soldiers. 

In it, she tells the soldiers: "Take these seeds and put them in your pockets. That way sunflowers will grow when you all rest here." 

It is the first original music from Pink Floyd since 1994's "The Division Bell". 

Gilmour tweeted his opposition to the war soon after Russia's invasion, saying: "Putin must go". 

The band has also pulled their music from Russian and Belarusian streaming sites in protest at the invasion.

Zelensky tells UN to 'act immediately' on Russia or close

Yahoo – AFP, Philippe RATER, April 5, 2022

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, addresses a meeting of the United Nations Security
Councilin New York City on April 5, 2022 (AFP/TIMOTHY A. CLARY) (TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged the United Nations to "act immediately" or "dissolve yourself altogether" during a blistering address Tuesday in which he showed harrowing footage of dead bodies -- including children -- he said were victims of Russian atrocities. 

Likening Russia's actions in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities to violence carried out by "terrorists" such as the Islamic State group, Zelensky called on the 15-member Security Council -- which aims to ensure international peace and security -- to expel Russia "so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war." 

Russia, as one of the five permanent members of the Council, has a veto, which it has repeatedly wielded to block resolutions and negotiations on the global stage. 

That means it cannot be expelled from the body, as it would simply veto any vote or recommendation by the Security Council to do so. 

"If there is no alternative ... then the next option would be dissolve yourself altogether," Zelensky continued. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the UN? ... If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately." 

Bearded and dressed in his now trademark military green T-shirt, Zelensky, speaking remotely from Kyiv, gave a chilling rendition of the atrocities he said were carried out by Russian troops against civilians in Bucha, a town outside the Ukrainian capital. 

Bucha had been occupied by Russian troops, but when they withdrew recently Ukrainian authorities and independent international journalists including AFP found bodies of people in civilian clothing, some with their hands tied behind their backs. 

Zelensky aired a graphic, 90-second clip of what he said were images from towns including Bucha and the southern port of Mariupol. 

The footage showed partially uncovered dead people, including children, in shallow graves, several bodies in a courtyard and dead people with hands tied behind their back slumped towards a wall. 

"Now the world can see what the Russian military did in Bucha," Zelensky said. 

"They were killed in their apartments, houses, blowing up grenades, civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road, just for their pleasure. They cut off limbs... slashed their throats," he said. 

"Women were raped and killed in front of their children, their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressors did not hear what they wanted to hear from them. 

"This is no different from other terrorists such as Daesh ... and here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council," he said, using another acronym for the Islamic State group. 

"Accountability must be inevitable," he said, claiming that "hundreds of thousands" of Ukrainians had also been deported to Russia. 

Moments later Russia's ambassador, in his own comments, rejected the claims entirely. 

'No witnesses' 

Addressing his remarks directly to Zelensky, Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow places "on your conscience the ungrounded accusations against the Russian military, which are not confirmed by any eye witnesses." 

At least one witness has told AFP of watching Russian soldiers shoot a man in cold blood in Bucha. 

Russia has claimed that images presented by Ukrainian authorities to show there had been a massacre in Bucha were fake, or that the deaths occurred after Russian soldiers pulled out of the areas.

 It has not offered evidence, and satellite imagery has shown bodies there for weeks, before Moscow withdrew its troops from the town. 

Nevertheless Nebenzia repeated those claims, telling the council: "You only saw what they showed you. You couldn't ignore the flagrant inconsistencies in the version of events which are being promoted by Ukrainian and Western media." 

He also denied Zelensky's allegation of mass deportations. 

Since the invasion began "over 600,000 people have been evacuated to Russia, including over 119,000 children," Nebenzia told the body. 

He said the evacuations were "voluntary," not "coercion or abduction." 

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, sparking outrage across the world and displacing millions of Ukrainians.

UN General Assembly demands Russia end Ukraine war

MSN – AFP, 24 March 2022

© TIMOTHY A. CLARY Ukraine's UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya, speaks during
a General Assembly Emergency Special Session on Ukraine at the United Nations
in New York on March 23, 2022

The UN General Assembly on Thursday adopted by an overwhelming majority a new non-binding resolution that demands an "immediate" halt to Russia's war in Ukraine. 

At UN headquarters in New York, 140 countries voted in favor, 38 abstained and five voted against the measure, with applause ringing out afterwards.  

The vote came after the adoption of a similar non-binding resolution on March 2 that demanded Russia immediately cease its use of force -- a vote that was approved by 141 countries. 

On Wednesday Ukraine put forward the new resolution, originally prepared by France and Mexico, at an emergency session of the General Assembly. 

A competing text by South Africa, which never mentioned Russia by name, received only 50 votes for, 67 against and 36 abstentions, and was therefore not adopted. 

The approved resolution specifically implicates Moscow and "demands an immediate cessation of the hostilities by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in particular of any attacks against civilians and civilian objects." 

The same five countries voted against the resolution Thursday and March 2 -- Russia, Syria, North Korea, Belarus and Eritrea. 

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, welcomed the "strong majority" of member states that approved the resolution. 

The countries made clear that "Russia bears sole responsibility for the grave humanitarian crisis and violence in Ukraine," she said. 

"As President Biden has stated clearly, Vladimir Putin will not see victory in Ukraine. And we heard today that he will not see it here in New York either." 

Joe Biden and his Western counterparts gathered in Brussels on Thursday for NATO, G7 and EU summits, with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky also participated by videolink. 

On Wednesday Russia submitted a resolution to the UN Security Council on the "humanitarian situation" in Ukraine -- but it was not adopted, with 13 of the 15 member states pointedly abstaining in solidarity over what diplomats said was the text's unacceptable basis.

UN chief calls Russia-Ukraine war 'unwinnable'

France24 – AFP, 22 March 2022 

In this file photo taken on February 28, 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
speaks on the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the General Assembly emergency special
session in New York Kena Betancur AFP/File

United Nations (United States) (AFP) – UN chief Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that it was time for Russia to end their "absurd war" in Ukraine, declaring the conflict "unwinnable." 

The Secretary General told reporters at the world body's headquarters in New York that the war "is going nowhere, fast." 

"For more than two weeks, Mariupol has been encircled by the Russian army and relentlessly bombed, shelled and attacked. For what?" he said. 

"Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house." 

Guterres added that "the only outcome" to more fighting was "more suffering, more destruction, and more horror as far as the eye can see." 

Negotiators from Moscow and Kyiv have held ongoing talks aimed at ending nearly four weeks of fierce fighting, but have failed to announce any progress so far. 

Guterres said though that he believed diplomatic negotiations to bring a halt to fighting were making headway. 

"There is enough on the table to cease hostilities now and seriously negotiate now. 

"This war is unwinnable. Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table. That is inevitable," he added. 

The UN General Assembly is due to reconvene a special emergency session on Ukraine on Wednesday and hold a vote this week on a non-binding French and Mexican resolution condemning Russia's invasion. 

Earlier this month, 141 out of 193 United Nations member states supported a similar resolution. 

The vote will indicate whether Russia has lost or gained any support over its actions since that vote on March 2. 

South Africa, which abstained last time around, has circulated a rival draft resolution which calls for an end to hostilities but makes no mention of Russia as the aggressor.

Trump urges China, Russia, US arms control in Putin call: W.House

Yahoo – AFP, May 7, 2020

US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin discussed arms control
issues in a phone call (AFP Photo/JIM WATSON, EMMANUEL DUNAND)

US President Donald Trump called Thursday for involving China in new arms control talks with Russia, telling his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that they need to avoid a "costly arms race," the White House said.

"President Trump reaffirmed that the United States is committed to effective arms control that includes not only Russia, but also China, and looks forward to future discussions to avoid a costly arms race," a statement said.

Trump and Putin spoke by phone, also discussing the global coronavirus pandemic, the White House said.

"President Trump reiterated that the United States is working hard to care for Americans at home and is also ready to provide assistance to any country in need, including Russia," the statement said.

Russia and the United States -- rivals during the four decades of the Cold War -- ripped up the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty this year, blaming one another for its demise.

That deal was seen as a cornerstone of global security and its burial sparked fears of a new arms race.

Washington is threatening to quit the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or "New START", when it expires next year.

New START -- which obliged them to halve the number of missile launchers and set up a new verification regime -- is seen as the last major deal keeping their arsenals below the Cold War peak.

However, Trump has been pushing for China to be brought into a future deal, arguing that Beijing's missile and nuclear capability is rapidly expanding.

Putin, Erdogan agree ceasefire in Syria's Idlib

Yahoo – AFP, Michael Mainville and Maria Panina, March 5, 2020

The Syrian government's attempt to take Idlib has forced close to a million
civilians to flee their homes (AFP Photo)

Moscow (AFP) - Turkey and Russia agreed on Thursday to halt fighting in northern Syria that has sparked a humanitarian disaster and raised fears of their armies clashing, with a ceasefire due to take effect within hours.

After more than six hours of talks in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on the ceasefire from midnight on Friday.

The agreement will also create a security corridor along the key M4 highway in northern Syria, where Turkish and Russian forces will launch joint patrols from March 15.

The deal aims to put a stop to intense fighting in Idlib, the northwestern province of Syria where Ankara is battling Moscow-backed government forces.

Nearly a million civilians have fled their homes due to the violence and dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed.

Putin told a joint press conference after the talks that the agreement would "serve as a good basis for ending fighting" in Idlib and for "stopping the suffering of the civilian population".

"The object is to avoid the humanitarian crisis getting worse," Erdogan said, though he added that Turkey reserved the right to "retaliate with all its strength against any attack" by Damascus.

The situation in Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria's nine-year civil war, had become critical as Ankara for the first time launched a direct offensive against President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Putin (R) and Erdogan (L) agreed the ceasefire at Moscow talks (AFP Photo/
Pavel Golovkin)

More Turkish soldiers killed

Turkey has long backed certain rebel groups against Assad but its priority now is to stop an influx of refugees among those fleeing an offensive the regime has been pressing on Idlib since December.

Ankara has demanded the European Union support its actions in Syria and last week opened its border with EU member Greece to migrants -- a move decried by some in the bloc as "blackmail".

Despite supporting opposing sides in the war, Russia and Turkey have worked to try to resolve the conflict and avoid direct confrontation.

The two countries agreed a deal in the southern Russian city of Sochi in 2018 that created a "de-escalation" zone in Idlib and allowed for the deployment of 12 Turkish observation posts.

In the run-up to Thursday's talks, the two sides had traded accusations of violating the deal.

Ankara said Russia was not fulfilling part of the agreement that guaranteed no attacks on Idlib and the status quo on the ground.

Moscow in turn said Turkey was breaching the agreement by supporting "illegal armed groups" and accused Turkish forces of mingling with "terrorists" in Idlib.

Turkey officially declared an operation against the Assad government over the weekend, after 34 Turkish soldiers died in an air strike blamed on Damascus.

It has since downed three Syrian warplanes and killed dozens of soldiers and allied fighters, according to monitors.

Two more Turkish soldiers were killed by Syrian regime fire in Idlib, the defence ministry said, just hours before the ceasefire was due to take effect.

Turkey warned Europe it must support Ankara in Syria to avoid a repeat of the 

2015 migration crisis (AFP Photo/Ozan KOSE)

Migrants mass on border

The deal leaves open the fate of the Turkish observation posts in Idlib, which have been surrounded since Damascus launched its offensive.

But it does mark the first time Russian and Turkish forces will operate jointly in Idlib.

The security corridor along the M4 highway, which connects second city Aleppo to the coast through Idlib, will run six kilometres deep both north and south of the highway.

The joint Russian-Turkish patrols will operate between the town of Tronba in Idlib and a village in Latakia province, a regime stronghold.

Fighting continued elsewhere in Idlib on Thursday, with Russian air strikes killing at least 15 civilians gathered outside the town of Maaret Misrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Erdogan warned Europe on Wednesday that it must support Turkey's "political and humanitarian solutions in Syria" if it wants to avoid a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis.

Thousands of migrants have massed at the Turkish-Greek border since Erdogan gave them the green light to try to enter Europe, leading to clashes with Greek police.

Turkey hosts roughly 3.6 million refugees from Syria -- and hundreds of thousands from elsewhere -- and Erdogan's move has sparked concern in Europe of a renewed influx of migrants.