More than 1,000 more people are to be evacuated later in the day
Yevgeny Posukhov, the press-secretary of the Russian Embassy in Damascus, said two Emergency Situation Ministry planes would arrive in Syria in the evening to pick up the group at Latakia international airport.
Russia's foreign minister said Tuesday 1,230 citizens of Russia and other CIS countries would be evacuated from Lebanon in the next two days and that a second group of Russians - 960 people on 20 buses - would follow the same route across the Syrian border.
Lavrov also said France and Greece had proposed taking Russians evacuated from Lebanon on board their ships.
Lavrov said Russians were also being evacuated from the Gaza Strip, but added that it would be more difficult to evacuate them from Lebanon. "No fewer than 1,500 people want to leave, as well as hundreds of Belarusians and other countries' nationals. All of them are in contact with our representatives," he said.
