Russia and the United States were close to starting joint military action against militants in Syria’s Aleppo, Russian news agencies have quoted defence dminister Sergei Shoigu as saying.



Fighting for control of the divided city of two million people has intensified in recent weeks and there have been gains for rebel groups battling Syrian government forces.

Russia backs the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in the five-year-old Syria conflict, while the United States wants to see Assad step down. But both are participating in talks to try to find a political solution to end the civil war.

Senior Russian and US military officials had held Geneva negotiations on Aleppo and on restoring an overall ceasefire, the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said last Thursday.

On Monday the RIA news agency cited Shoigu as saying: “We are now in a very active phase of negotiations with our American colleagues.”

“We are moving step by step closer to a plan – and I’m only talking about Aleppo here – that would really allow us to start fighting together to bring peace so that people can return to their homes in this troubled land.”

Asked about Shoigu’s remarks, the US state department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said in Washington: “We have seen the reports and have nothing to announce ... We remain in close contact [with Russian officials].”

Trudeau said the United States continued to push for a broader cessation of Syria hostilities accord with Russia.

The battle for Aleppo had become “one of the most devastating urban conflicts in modern times,” said Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“No one and nowhere is safe. Shellfire is constant, with houses, schools and hospitals all in the line of fire. People live in a state of fear. Children have been traumatised. The scale of the suffering is immense,” Maurer said.

The ICRC reiterated its call on all warring parties to allow humanitarian agencies to deliver supplies to civilians in desperate need of food and clean water across Aleppo.

Shoigu said Russia had delivered aid to Aleppo and is helping to rebuild damaged water pumping stations. About 700,000 people were still living in Aleppo and residents in the eastern part of the city were “hostages of armed groups”, he added.

Earlier on Monday the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Syrian militants had used a temporary ceasefire around Aleppo to regroup.

His deputy Mikhail Bogdanov said Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia should play a more active role in helping to resolve the Syria crisis.

“[They should] sit down at the table and negotiate,” Bogdanov told RIA, saying he would meet representatives of the Syrian opposition in the Qatari capital, Doha, on 16 August.

The official spokesman for the Syrian opposition’s High Negotiations Committee (HNC), Riad Nassan Agha, said on Monday that the HNC was unaware of this meeting and he did not know which “opposition” Bogdanov was referring to.