Posted on 09/12/2015 2:46:19 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Moscow will reportedly provide Russian troops in Syria with an advanced antiaircraft missile system as part of its military support for Syrian president Bashar Assad.
"This system is the advanced version used by Russia, and it's meant to be operated by Russians in Syria," a Western diplomat who is regularly briefed on US, Israeli, and other intelligence assessments told Reuters.
And as The Daily Beast's Michael Weiss points out, any antiaircraft missiles deployed by Russian troops in Syria won't be directed at ISIS, since ISIS has no air force.
In fact, none of the rebels do — only government forces have access to aircraft.
Russia has substantially increased its military presence in Syria over the past two weeks under the guise of helping the embattled Assad fight ISIS and other extremists.
And now that US and Russian fighter jets are flying side-by-side — the US has been launching airstrikes against ISIS since mid-2014, and Russian drones and fighter planes are reportedly surveilling non-ISIS rebels in the country's north — Moscow sees it as an opportunity to force Washington to come to the table.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
You said it was the root cause and the invasion empowered radical Islam. How? The failures of Maliki and Obama led to the vacuum, not the invasion that smashed Saddam and had stabilized Iraq until Obama goofed it up with his indifference.
Putin wants Poland. His cheerleaders want him to have it.
Make no mistake, Russia (wannabe Czar Putin) wants Poland and for that matter all of the former Warsaw Pact/ Eastern European Nations back as vassal states under it's total control.
He doesn’t know. I do. He’s wrong.
The invasion of Iraq toppled one of radical Islam's most powerful and dangerous enemies.
I don’t parrot anyone, including MSM articles from 2014. Nothing you read in the MSM can be trusted. Most of what you “see” in the press is b-roll filler from the enemy. Of course, you know all about that.
No, invading Iraq led to the vacuum and George Bush signed the status of forces agreement that stipulated that all US combat forces would be out of Iraq by December 31, 2011. That was the agreement.
not the invasion that smashed Saddam and had stabilized Iraq
If Iraq was so stable, leaving shouldn't have been an issue.
because there is no compelling reason to leave.
Assad’s airforce is ISIS’s airforce; 12% minority can’t rule over the rest, it will pull Egypt and others in. So you are siding with the QUDS who killed our men.
More RT nonsense.
We were also scheduled to leave Afghanistan, we are still there.
ISIS has more Soviet, Russian and Chinese arms than American.
At least, there are not whole American battalions in ISIS but there are indeed whole Russian battalions in ISIS. http://www.rferl.org/archive/under-the-black-flag/latest/17257/17257.html
I guess that’s why ISIS leaders have been killed, Baghdadi seriously injured.
Assad is ISIS’s airforce.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2884/assad-slaughtering-syrian-christians
John Bolton’s Gatestone Institute; Assad slaughtering Syrian Christians.
Very very few attacks. Mostly for show.
Assad has killed more than ISIS; Putin and Iran back him up. Syria started this whole storm and Iran and Syria also aided the terrorists in Iraq when we were in Iraq.
so George Bush had nothing to with anything and Iraq was a fantastic idea. Got it. we’re done.
Got it, don’t point out facts. We’re done.
Where did Al-Qaeda and its offshoot ISIS come from?
Russia created them while fighting its decade-long war to take over Afghanistan during the 1980s. Osama bin Laden created organized Middle Eastern jihadist terrorism by uniting anti-Russian Muslim radicals into what became Al-Qaeda, which helped defeat the Russians and expel them from Afghanistan.
So here are the Russians today, coming back to try to defeat today’s much-more powerful, brutal, and organized Al-Qaeda and ISIS armies in Syria, when it couldn’t even defeat the early fledgling, ragtag versions of those organizations when Russia was a superpower thirty-five years ago?
Today’s Russian army can’t even defeat the Ukrainian army, against which its been battling for more than a year to take over a small Russian-speaking portion of that country.
If Russia’s experience of losing wars over the past half-century is repeated in Syria, Al-Qaeda and ISIS will grow stronger than ever and Bashar al-Assad will be defeated and his allies, particularly Iran and Russia, will be weakened.
So bring it on, Vladimir.
Natasha Bertrand
Sept 10, 2015
Some of the Russian troops reportedly being sent to Syria are from the same brigade that helped annex Crimea, according to a lengthy investigation conducted by Ruslan Leviev, a specialist in social-media intelligence.
The Kremlin has declined to comment, but, if true, “the deployment of an elite unit from Crimea, which inaugurated Russia’s standoff with the West, is an intriguing choice,” writes The Daily Beast’s Michael Weiss.
“Moscow has spent enormous resources moving troops into Crimea and eastern Ukraine over the past year. Moving even some of them out of the area to a different conflict zone, particularly one outside of Europe, gives the lie that sanctions and diplomatic isolation have forced the Kremlin into compromise,” Weiss writes:.
“Rather, Russia appears ready and willing to take on multiple wars at once,” he adds.
Russia initially said that it had only deployed “military experts” to Syria to help government forces learn how to use Russian military equipment.
But the Israeli defense minister and Reuters have confirmed that the Russians are taking part in the fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad and building up their military presence in the western coastal province of Latakia.
Boris Zilberman, a Middle East and Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider by email that he thinks it makes logistical sense that Russia would deploy a brigade from Crimea to Syria, since the eastern Mediterranean is the responsibility of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
“It wouldn’t make sense to deploy these types of troops from Kamchatka [in far east Russia], for instance,” Zilberman said. “Also, seeing as how they’ve have recently participated in the annexation of Crimea, they are probably more combat-ready than others.”
An intelbrief released by The Soufan Group affirms that Putin’s latest incursion into Syria on the side of Bashar Assad is deliberate and aligned with Russian interests.
“While Russia has provided military assistance to Syria for decades, the recent apparent increase in support is noteworthy in both its timing and future implications,” the brief reads. “It is difficult to overstate Russian determination not to lose its influence in Syria via the Assad regime, which provides Russia with a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern base that cannot be replaced elsewhere.”
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More, plus terrific maps and charts, at:
September 11, 2015
Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson
FoxNews.com
As the Pentagon warily eyes a Russian military build-up in Syria, Western intelligence sources tell Fox News that the escalated Russian presence began just days after a secret Moscow meeting in late July between Iran’s Quds Force commander — their chief exporter of terror — and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fox News has learned Quds head Qassem Soleimani and Putin discussed such a joint military plan for Syria at that meeting, an encounter first reported by Fox News in early August. ...”
The Quds Force is the international arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, involved in exporting terrorism to Iran’s proxies throughout the Middle East including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. ...”
Officials who have monitored the build-up say they’ve seen more than 1,000 Russian combatants — some of them from the same plainclothes Special Forces units who were sent to Crimea and Ukraine. Some of these Russian troops are logistical specialists and needed for security at the expanding Russian bases.
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