Syria eyes 'strategic' ties with Ukraine, Kyiv vows more food aid shipments

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 2022 invasion.

Sybiha, who also met Syria's new de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus on Monday, said Ukraine would send more food aid shipments to Syria after the expected arrival of 20 shipments of flour on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced last Friday the dispatch of Ukraine's first batch of food aid to Syria comprising 500 metric tons of wheat flour as part of Kyiv's humanitarian "Grain from Ukraine" initiative in cooperation with the United Nations World Food Programme.

Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, traditionally exports wheat and corn to countries in the Middle East, but not to Syria, which in the Assad era imported food from Russia.

Russian wheat supplies to Syria have been suspended because of uncertainty about the new government in Damascus and payment delays, Russian and Syrian sources told Reuters in early December. Russia had supplied wheat to Syria using complex financial and logistical arrangements to circumvent Western sanctions imposed on both Moscow and Damascus.

The ousting of Assad by al-Sharaa's Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has thrown the future of Russia's military bases in Syria - the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia and the Tartous naval facility - into question.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the status of Russia's military bases would be the subject of negotiations with the new leadership in Damascus.

Al-Sharaa said this month that Syria's relations with Russia should serve common interests. In an interview published on Sunday, he said Syria shared strategic interests with Russia, striking a conciliatory tone, though he did not elaborate.