DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Syria hopes for “strategic partnerships” with Ukraine, its new foreign minister told his Ukrainian counterpart on Monday, as Kyiv moves to build ties with the new Islamist rulers in Damascus amid waning Russian influence.
Russia was a staunch ally of ousted President Bashar al-Assad and has given him political asylum. Moscow has said it is in contact with the new administration in Damascus, including over the fate of Russian military facilities in Syria.
“There will be strategic partnerships between us and Ukraine on the political, economic and social levels, and scientific partnerships,” Syria’s newly appointed foreign minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, told Ukraine’s Andrii Sybiha.
“Certainly the Syrian people and the Ukrainian people have the same experience and the same suffering that we endured over 14 years,” he added, apparently drawing a parallel between Syria’s brutal 2011-24 civil war and Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory culminating in its full-scale …