Syrian FM accepts Saudi invitation on first trip abroad

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al Shibani, appointed by the new rulers, said on X on Monday that he had accepted an invitation from his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah to visit, in what would be his first foreign trip.

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.

Reuters