Posted on 01/06/2017 12:30:47 PM PST by BenLurkin
ussia says it is beginning to draw down its forces fighting in Syria's war. It decisively entered the war in September 2015, and has been a major factor keeping Syrian President Bashar Assad in power.
This isn't the first time Russia has made this kind of announcement. "Last March, Putin also announced a withdrawal from Syria," NPR's Lucian Kim reports from Moscow. "Instead, Russia ended up intensifying its war effort."
This latest announcement comes on the heels of a major military victory for the Syrian regime — retaking control of rebel-held portions of the northern city of Aleppo. A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey took effect a week ago and has appeared to reduce the violence in the war-torn country, though rebels and government forces have traded accusations of violations.
These developments "make Russian forces less critical to Assad at this juncture of the war — though it's unclear how extensive the drawdown might be," The Associated Press reports.
The chief of Russia's General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, says Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, will be the first to go, along with its accompanying ships.
"In accordance with the decision by Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin, Russia's Defense Ministry is starting to downsize the grouping of the armed forces in Syria," Gerasimov said in comments broadcast on state television.
The aircraft carrier will start moving Friday back toward Russia, Gerasimov said.
The Admiral Kuznetsov has been involved in combat operations since mid-November, according to the AP. Here's more from the news service:
"The ship has so far lost two aircraft — an Su-33 fighter jet that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea in December as it returned to the carrier following a sortie over Syria. In November, a MiG-29 crashed into the sea while trying to land on the vessel."
Must be moving them to Europe to face down Nato.
That would please Putin’s fan club.
This isn’t the first time Russia has made this kind of announcement. “Last March, Putin also announced a withdrawal from Syria,” NPR’s Lucian Kim reports from Moscow. “Instead, Russia ended up intensifying its war effort.”
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If true, then it fits the norm. Easy to get in a war. Hard as hell to find an exit strategy.
Hard as hell to find an exit strategy.
Should be easier to win now that the US isn’t going to be arming, funding, and training isis anymore
Double dittoes on that.
But I doubt even Putie has the stones to do that!
It’s a true tragedy that Putin was not born American.
He’s s patriotic, God fearing man of incredible intellect . How he outstrips every leader we have had since Reagan. Trump looks set to break the trend
The Russians have had serious problems with their only aircraft carrier. I suspect this is more a cover for the failure of the ship’s design than a “cutting down on forces”.
They have lost 2 aircraft from problems landing on the carrier. Have read the issue is with the design of the restraining mechanism for landings. Possibly also the catapults for launching the planes.
It is also a diesel powered ship. Smoke comes from the stack when it runs. In todays world, looks very strange.
Afghanistan 2?
“The most effective, sure fire method is to drop a couple of low yield nukes.”
In this type of conflict there really aren’t many targets worthy of a nuke. Typically, there are only a handful of combatants. Going nuclear would have consequences far outweighing the presumed advantage. Also, setting aside the civilian casualties, you have to live with the aftermath, physical and political.
A US soldier said about a ruined French town, “we sure liberated the Hell out of this place.” Now, suppose you couldn’t use it for the next thousand years.
I was being tongue in cheek. It’s how we got a nice, clean unconditional surrender a few decades ago.
“I was being tongue in cheek. It’s how we got a nice, clean unconditional surrender a few decades ago.”
Sorry.
(This is my understanding about what happened.) Actually, the surrender wasn’t what it appeared to be. The military junta wanted to fight on. The emperor, for the first time, stepped in, and, used the nukes as leverage, he managed to cause a political crisis and the junta felt outmaneuvered. Probably from that point on if they had resisted there would have been a civil war. The emperor was in a weak position but he had superior psychological clout. It would have been touch and go as the power structure resorted itself. As it was, the emperor overcame the junta and the surrender came off easily from our perspective. It could just as easily have gone the other way.
Also, we hadn’t constructed additional bombs. Truman bluffed. (Can you imagine Obama pulling that off? We would probably have surrendered.)
Probably a temporary reduction in forces, if it’s even real. The carrier was not a significant factor and was only there to gain operational experience in use of aircraft carriers. The carrier itself is an obsolete pig.
My take: We were preparing Operations Downfall, Coronet and Olympic. The problem was that American casualties were expected to be as high as a million and Japanese as high as 10 million.
The first nuke was dropped to show the power we had, and the second to show we could completely wipe out every man, woman and child in Japan without losing a single man (They had no idea how many we had, but the second one certainly suggested we had more).
i.e. resistance would have been national suicide, while inflicting no pain on us. So they really had no choice.
Oh, and another reason for the second bomb was a message to the USSR: “Don’t plan on doing here what you are doing in eastern europe.” And they were preparing to do just that. The bombs shut everybody down and were the beginning of the US being the most powerful nation on the planet.
I agree with everything you said, but I think the Japanese were okay with national suicide. I think the emperor played a significant role in preventing that. (Recall the Movie Tone Newsreels showing civilians jumping off cliffs? Okinawa, I think.)
Possibly, but they did not appear to be taking huges loses in Syria like they did in Afghanistan.
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