Russia's Defense Ministry says United Nations peacekeepers have returned to patrol the frontier between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for first time in years.

Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy of the Russian General Staff says the UN peacekeepers, aided by Russian forces, conducted their first patrolling mission in the area on Thursday.

Rudskoy talked to reporters at a press conference in Moscow.

The peacekeeping mission was halted in 2014 amid the violence in Syrian civil war.