Syrian president promises to 'redefine' relations with Russia in historic meeting with Putin

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has promised to "redefine" his country's relations with Russia during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The meeting between the two on Wednesday comes as Syria continues to call for the extradition of former President Bashar al-Assad, whom Sharaa and his allies overthrew in December.

Putin warmly welcomed Sharaa to the Kremlin in front of the cameras despite the two having previously been on different sides of Syria's 14-year civil war.

"Throughout all these decades, we have always been guided by one thing: the interests of the Syrian people," Putin said.

"We truly have very deep ties with the Syrian people."

Sharaa, for his part, said continuing relations would have to emphasise Syria's sovereignty, hinting at the numerous countries that became involved in the civil war.

"We are trying to restore and redefine in a new way the nature of these relations so there is independence for Syria, sovereign Syria, and also its territorial unity and integrity and its security stability," he said. 

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Despite the warm words, the status of Assad - a staunch ally of Putin - remains a sticking point.

A Syrian official told AFP that Damascus would ask Moscow to hand over Assad this week, as well as "all those" who have committed "war crimes" and are in Russia.

As of late afternoon, no Russian or Syrian leader had publicly addressed this issue.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday reaffirmed that Moscow had offered Assad and his family asylum for "purely humanitarian reasons" and that they were living "in the Russian capital". 

Apart from the fate of the former Syrian leader, there is also the question of the Russian military bases in Tartous and Khmeimim, located on the Mediterranean coast and constituting Russia's only official military outposts outside the former USSR.

There is no single agreed-upon number for the number of casualties that Russia's involvement in Syria's civil war caused, but estimates from different human rights groups and monitoring watchdogs put the number of civilian deaths in the range of 4,000 to 6,600.