MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Russian Defense Ministry announced earlier on Friday the deployment of a Russian military police battalion in Aleppo with a task to maintain security and order in the second-largest Syrian city recently liberated from terrorists.
According to Franz Klintsevich, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council's Defense and Security Committee, the battalion is a motorized infantry unit manning up to 400 servicemen.
"This battalion will also help organize and assist the political settlement [in Syria]," Klintsevich told RIA Novosti.
On December 16, the Russian Defense Ministry's center for Syrian reconciliation said that the Syrian army operation to liberate Aleppo's eastern neighborhoods was over, and that Syrian government troops were eliminating separate hotbeds of militants' resistance. On Thursday, the Syrian army declared victory in Aleppo as the last convoy with militants left the city's east.