Posted on 02/12/2018 11:53:29 PM PST by vikingrinn
The Conflict Intelligence Team found the Russians "may have fought alongside pro-Russia separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine prior to joining the fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and other insurgents challenging Assad's rule in Syria." The group also found Russians killed "appeared to have joined the Wagner Group, a private paramilitary company, before traveling to fight in Syria. Last October, ISIS released a video showing two Russian-speaking men the militants claimed to have captured, and subsequent research showed the two men were likely Wagner Group members fighting in Syria." "While the total number of 'Wagner' operatives killed in Coalition airstrikes is unlikely to ever be established, it is beyond doubt that this incident indeed took place."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
You like games PuBot?
When you call FReepers who have been here a lot longer than you “Russian bots” your motives come into question.
Typos. Restating: your ignorance of how Russsia’s oligarchy, elite, and economy works is glaring. Much of the country’s wealth is stashed in the Western bank accounts of Putin’s cronies not to mention Western estates, Western investments helped made possible by the likes of organizations like the Clinton Foundation and deals like Uranium One.
And yet you go on trying to tout some morally superior economic system that is somehow above the dollar?!
Good grief.
I changed my username after taking a break from the Romney (ew) debacle in 2012 and returned to the states after living abroad in Russia just as Trump’s election was underway here.
Maybe it’s time the U.S. stops this bullsh!t of building dysfunctional “nations” in these Third World sh!t-holes all over the place.
If that was important to us, we should have elected Hillary Clinton to carry on the George W. Bush legacy.
The problem with many of these countries is the existence of mutually irreconcilable factions in the same country, minority rule by one of the factions and a long list of other maladies. One result was the need to unite the country by pointing the finger at an external enemy. The problem is that they all tended to point the finger at Uncle Sam, which is how we came under attack from them. The breakup of these countries will help focus their energies against their new neighbors, which will help Uncle Sam in his quest for a quiet life.
The Russians can deal with that internally. The single biggest reason why U.S. banks are being used to stash their assets is that the U.S. embargo against Russia has made the value of their currency so erratic.
“As for the Neocons here, give em an M4 and drop them in Syria.”
Are you insane? There’s no Vermouth! They’d get waxed!
Oh.
Wait...
I was one of the few who survived.
Now, everyone tosses flowers in my path as I walk through a thread on FreeRepublic. LOL.
I have done no such thing.
I don't give a sh!t if Russia conducts business in beads and coconuts. It's none of my damn business.
That means -- by extension -- that it's none of my business if other countries accept Russian beads and coconuts in their foreign trade with Russia, and with each other.
Do you find it odd that Hezbollah (to cite one example) doesn't detonate car bombs regularly here in the U.S.? They certainly have the capability to do such a thing.
Maybe I'm naive, but I get the sense that they really prefer just to be left alone. Imagine that.
Do you find it odd that Hezbollah (to cite one example) doesn’t detonate car bombs regularly here in the U.S.? They certainly have the capability to do such a thing.
Maybe I’m naive, but I get the sense that they really prefer just to be left alone. Imagine that.
Historically legitimately. Greater Syria is an imperial fiction of Assad/Putin
I'm too young to remember the events as they unfolded, but I do remember that the whole charade played a big part in the pursuit of a military career on my part (or a lack of such, to be more accurate).
So you’re going to blame America for Putin’s unwillingness to break Russia’s dependence on oil and his kleptocratic, oligarchic, authoritarian power setup?
Does anyone even know what compelling U.S. interest was at stake in Lebanon back in the 1980s?
It’s strange how Lebanon was set aside as a safe haven for Christians, just as the Palestinian Mandate was meant to be a safe haven for Jews.
Christians are currently 35 % of the population. The French oversaw the creation of Lebanon. Syria does not really recognize Lebanon as a separate country. Lebanon was one of the most peaceful countries in the Middle East at one time. Then 1970 the PLO was pushed out of Jordan after trying to overthrow King Hussein and declare Palestine as being all of Jordan and Israel.
Many Christians have had to flee Lebanon. Muslims don’t necessarily coexist with anyone, let alone their own factions (Sunni and Shiite).
So we now have Hezbollah dictating policy in Lebanon. Hezbollah is allied with Iranian Shiite troops in Syria, and the Russians are allied with all of them.
Don’t forget that when the Arab armies were defeated in 1967 massive amounts of Russian arms were discovered by Israel. The arms had been prepositioned for a future assault upon Israel.
As I read through the history of Hezbollah, the thing that really stood out to me is the similarities between them and a group like the Irish Republican Army that became somewhat more “respectable” after it established a political arm and became a serious political player:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
“We were not invited.”
We were not invited into Afghanistan either.
Our national interest in Syria is annihilating ISIS.
I especially like that Russian Advisors were killed. Nice lesson for Puty-poot.
Why should I even care about Russia's dependence on oil? Why do you?
Why is the U.S. so concerned about Russia's dependence on oil and its kleptocratic, oligarchic, authoritarian power setup ... while we are perfectly willing to accept all of this -- in a radical Islamic context, by the way -- in a country like Saudi Arabia?
Why do we impose an embargo on Russia ... while we allow radical Islamic regimes to provide financial support pay bribes to U.S. government leaders like Lindsey Graham and John McCain?
“The only crime Russia has committed is that it refuses to kowtow to the U.S. and subvert its own currency to the U.S. dollar ... and in the process of doing this, it supports other regimes throughout the world that refuse to subvert their currencies to the U.S. dollar.”
Other crimes include illegally annexing Crimea. Illegally sending Spetznaz into Ukraine, illegally fomenting subversion in Ukraine, illegally invading Georgia, illegally fixing Russian Elections, illegally poisoning people within and external to Russia who oppose Putin, meddling in many European and American elections etc. etc. etc.
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