Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sent his foreign and agriculture ministers to meet Syria’s new leaders in a diplomatic drive to benefit from Moscow’s loss of influence in the region following the overthrow of Russian ally Bashar al-Assad.
“We proceed from the fact that the new Syria will become a state which will respect international law, including Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” said Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Sybiha, who met Syrian de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group in Damascus on Monday.
The Putin and Assad regimes had supported each other “because their foundation is violence and torture”, Sybiha said.