Putin tells Davos ‘Russia, Turkey and Iran have worked to stabilise Syria’

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin told the international leadership at Davos that “Russia, Turkey and Iran have done a lot to stabilize the situation in Syria. And we’ve been helping to establish political dialogue in this country along with other countries we’ve been doing together and it’s been  pretty successful.”

Putin did not discuss the detention of political opponent Alexei Navalny.

“Russia has made mediation efforts to stop hostilities in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Azerbaijan and Armenia are nations that are close to Russia, and we will help them too. And again, we followed the key arrangements of the OSC Minsk Group. And again, there are three chairs Russia, France, and the US and this is a very good role model for cooperation.

In Azerbaijan, a trilateral statement was signed between Russia, Romania and Azerbaijan. And it’s been largely implemented. We managed to stop bloodshed. This is the most important result, we managed to achieve an end to violence, and to stabilise affairs.

And right now, when countries need humanitarian assistance, displaced persons need to go back to their homes, infrastructure needs to be restored, monuments need to be restored religious sites to Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US.

This format has been a role model of cooperation between countries which could have divergent and polarising opinions on world affairs.”

Putin called for a more inclusive economy, noting that most of the profit from globalisation has reached only 1 per cent of the world’s population.

“We all know that competition between the nations has never stopped and will never stop.  And

we will see that the number of conflicts is increasing worldwide, while the international security architecture is falling apart.

“We’re seeing a spiraling of conflicts,” Putin said. “And as we know, the inability to address issues in a peaceful way resulted in World War II in the 20th century, I very much hope that such a hot conflict will not be possible during our era. But again, the situation can develop in an unpredicted way in an unmanageable way. We need to take action to avert that.”