RUSSIAN lawmakers voted unanimously yesterday to let President Vladimir Putin send Russian troops to Syria.

    Meanwhile, the Russian air force aid to Syria has come upon the request of President Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported yesterday.

    A couple of weeks ago, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in an interview that his government could ask for a Russian military aid if necessary.

    Putin has to request parliamentary approval for any use of Russian troops abroad, according to the constitution. The last time he did so was before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

    The Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, discussed Putin’s request for the authorization behind closed doors yesterday. Sergei Ivanov, chief of Putin’s administration, said in televised remarks after the discussion that the parliament voted unanimously to give the green light to Putin’s plea. The proposal does not need to go to another legislative body.

    Ivanov insisted that Moscow is not going to send ground troops to Syria but will only use its air force “in order to support the government forces in their fight against the Islamic State” group.

    Ivanov told reporters that Russia decided to help al-Assad in order to protect its own country from Islamic militants, not because of “some foreign policy goals or ambitions that our Western partners often accuse us of.”

    “We are talking about Russia’s national security interests,” Ivanov said, adding that Moscow is worried about a growing number of Russian recruits going off to fight for the Islamic State group.

    Ivanov said thousands of Russians had gone off to fight in Syria so it would be wise for Moscow to “take pre-emptive steps and do it on the distant frontiers instead of facing the issue here and later on.”

    Putin’s request comes after his bilateral meeting Monday with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, where the two were discussing Russia’s recent military buildup in Syria.

    Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (P5) should unite and seek the opportunity to politically solve the Syrian crisis.

    Wang made the remarks as the foreign ministers of China, Britain, France, Russia, the U.S. Secretary of State and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met at the U.N. headquarters in discussion of the Syrian crisis.

    The war in Syria has left at least 250,000 dead and forced millions to flee the country.

    (SD-Xinhua)