MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia's Hmeymim air facility in Syria's Latakia province and a naval facility in the port of Tartus cannot be called bases in the full sense of the word, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
"I would like to clarify that Hmeymim and Tartus, it is probably not entirely correct to call these sites bases, because a base itself presupposes a capital building, capital construction, and there is no capital construction in either of those [sites]," Peskov told reporters.
"Facilities are functioning, facilities, as you know, remain [and] are reliably protected from the air, by land and sea," Peskov added.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the withdrawal of the main part of the country’s air and naval forces from Syria as the tasks assigned to them have been broadly fulfilled. Putin said the remaining groupings in Hmeymim and the naval facility in Tartus would play a key role in monitoring the cessation of hostilities between Syrian government and rebel forces, in an effort to settle the ongoing civil war.
