Turkey and Hungary said they have received exemptions for gas payments to Russia after the United States imposed sanctions on Gazprombank, removing a major hurdle to the gas trade with Moscow.

KIRILL MOROZOV/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Turkey and Hungary said Friday that they had received waivers on gas payments to Russia after the United States imposed sanctions on Gazprombank last month over Moscow's war with Ukraine. The exemptions remove a ...

Turkey has obtained a US waiver to continue paying for Russian natural gas through the sanctioned Gazprombank.

The US government has issued a waiver allowing Turkey to make gas payments to the Russian-owned Gazprombank, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Middle East Eye on Friday. Last month, the US Treasury said Gazprombank and its six foreign subsidiaries were subject to sanctions due to their involvement in the Ukraine war.

Turkey is exploring several alternatives to process gas payments to Russia following Washington's sanctions on Gazprombank last month, including taking loans from Russian banks and settling payments through expenditures related to the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant.

Despite Erdogan's praise of Putin, the fall of Assad is seen widely as a blow to the Russian President. Assad's brutal oppression in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising sparked the civil war in Syria, which lasted for five years.

A military official at al-Khadim air base in eastern Libya said that a half-dozen Russian planes — some coming from Russia and some from Syria — had arrived carrying military equipment since Dec. 8, when Syrian rebels overthrew Russia’s ally, Bashar al-Assad.

Assad's regime is the latest casualty of Iran's war on Israel. After keeping his hold on Syria through 13 years of civil war, Assad fled to Russia last weekend just before a new rebel offensive took Damascus.

Turkey feels its longstanding support of the Syrian opposition has now been vindicated. But its increased influence in Damascus also comes with significant responsibilities.

Assad has fled to Moscow, Iran has withdrawn from Syria and abandoned its mercenaries, and Russia’s remaining soldiers are isolated in the Assadist strongholds of Latakia and Tartus — where its

Now that Iran is weakened, it’s time to turn our attention to Turkey. It will take more than the destruction of Hamas, the disarmament of Hezbollah, and the fall of the Assad dictatorship to put an end to the threat posed to the world by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.