Russian missiles 'hit IS in Syria from Caspian'

BBC ^ | Oct. 7, 2015

[McGruff]

Russia has launched rocket strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria from its warships in the Caspian Sea,

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu says. Mr Shoigu was quoted by Russian media as saying four warships launched 26 sea-based cruise missiles on 11 targets, destroying them.

[McGruff]

Multiple source reporting this.

Also Syrian forces beginning a ground attack.

[McGruff]

Russian fighter jets have intercepted U.S. predator drones on at least three separate occasions high above Syria since the start of Russia’s air campaign last week, according to two U.S. officials briefed on this latest intelligence from the region.

“The first time it happened, we thought the Russians got lucky. Then it happened two more times,” said one official.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/07/exclusive-russian-jets-intercept-us-predator-drones-over-syria-officials-say/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fworld+%28Internal+-+World+Latest+-+Text%29

[hoosiermama]

BOOM

[ETL]

From Aug 23, 2015:

"a recent investigation conducted by Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent newspapers left in Russia, complicates this cozy tale of counterterrorist cooperation. Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions.

In other words, Russian officials are adding to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/23/russia-s-playing-a-double-game-with-islamic-terror0.html

[ETL]

Understanding Provocation [Provokatsiya]

March 29, 2014

One of the most powerful tools the Kremlin has in its secret arsenal of Special War is provocation, what they call provokatsiya.

While Moscow cannot claim to have invented this technique, which has existed as long as there have been secret services, there’s no doubt that Russians have perfected the art and taken it to a whole new level of sophistication and deviousness. At times, it can become a strategy all on its own (not always, mind you, with edifying results).

Provokatsiya simply means taking control of your enemies in secret and encouraging them to do things that discredit them and help you. You plant your own agents provocateurs and flip legitimate activists [in this case, dupe actual Jihadis -ETL], turning them to your side.

When you’re dealing with extremists to start with, getting them to do crazy, self-defeating things isn’t often difficult. In some cases, you simply create extremists and terrorists where they don’t exist. This is causing problems in order to solve them, and since the Tsarist period, Russian intelligence has been known to do just that.

While this isn’t a particularly nice technique, it works surprisingly well, particularly if you don’t care about bloody and messy consequences. ..."

http://20committee.com/2014/03/29/understanding-provocation/
_________________________________

In other words, it's like starting a fire, or pouring gasoline on a fire, in order to the 'big hero', being first on the scene to put it out. Except in this case, you get to grab control over the buildings and town you helped 'saved' from the fire.
_________________________________

[McGruff]

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles...

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latest-syria-launches-ground-push-amid-russian-strikes-34305312

[ETL]

From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

"KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts — in Russia and the West — have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..." (continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

[rfreedom4u]

Looking at a map, I can’t help but wonder about the path of these missiles. Which country did they fly over and was consent given?

[ETL]

“For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.

He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin’s administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004.”

“On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

[CPT Clay]

Me too, had to go over Iran, possibly Iraq or Turkey.

[McGruff]

I don’t know but:

The Caspian sea lies between countries including Russia, Azjerbaijan and Iran, the missiles flew approximately 1,500km before reaching their targets, reports Russia Today.

[grania]

Whenever something new comes up, I take a look at the map and try to piece together what the game might be. (yeah, maps are an inner nerd obsession)

I suggest everyone take a look at a map of the Caspian Sea. If Russia gets a land corridor from there to Syria and Russia gets the eastern third of Ukraine, and the Kurds would like to break away from Turkey, where does that leave Turkey? Would NATO feel obligated to defend the ISIS-enabling loons?

[Psalm 144]

“Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles...”

Probably technically true. Perhaps the question should have been how Saudi Arabia obtained those vehicles.

I want to know what ISIS friendly air force was being warned off with the air recognition banners on the hoods.

[silverleaf]

” Toyota Wars” the Middle East version

Brought to you by “ the company”

Oh what a feeling!

[mac_truck]

Which country did they fly over and was consent given?

Iran and Iraq and my guess is that they're ok with it.

[manc]

Putin doing a job fairy boy in the rainbow house won’t do

[Psalm 144]

“Would NATO feel obligated to defend the ISIS-enabling loons?”

Remember Libya?

[rfreedom4u]

If we assume the target was in central Syria and measure 937 miles out, that would put the launch position around the north central Caspian with a possible flight path over Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey.

[manc]

Putin bombs and kills ISIS while we ask Toyota how ISSI got some Toyotas, you can’t even make this crap up anymore.

[Psalm 144]

“In other words, it’s like starting a fire, or pouring gasoline on a fire, in order to the ‘big hero’, being first on the scene to put it out. Except in this case, you get to grab control over the buildings and town you helped ‘saved’ from the fire.”

Yes, sounds like the Arab Spring alright.