Russian troops in Syria in war against ISIS

In Syria, Putin Calls Obama’s Bluff, Russia Joins War Against the “Islamic State” (ISIS)

Eric Zuesse

Global Research,

3 September, 2015

According to German Economic News (September 1st, based on reports from ynetnews and others), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apparently decided to establish in Syria a military base with thousands of soldiers and sufficient air power to do in Syria what the Obama Administration won’t, which is to defeat ISIS and the other jihadists.

On the same day, washingtonsblog bannered, “Former CIA Boss and 4-Star General: U.S. Should Arm Al Qaeda,” and linked to several sources indicating that not only David Petraeus favors arming Al Qaeda, but much of the American establishment (who have sponsored Petraeus’s entire career) also does. The British aristocracy likewise does. In fact, that academic propaganda-piece, The Russia Challenge, discusses “the stark choices Western governments face in their policies towards Russia,” while it says nothing about “the stark choices” that Russia now faces in its policies toward the U.S. aristocracy, and toward Britain’s and other U.S-allied aristocracies.

That British academic propaganda-piece comes from Chatham House, otherwise called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which, since early in the 20th Century, has been allied in the U.S. with the Rockefellers’ and Morgans’ Council on Foreign Relations, and, post-WWII, also with the Bilderberg group, and with the Rockefellers’ Trilateral Commission (which brought the Japanese aristocracy into the overall U.S.-led plan for global conquest).

However, there are additionally many other front-organizations for this operation, such as the Brookings Institution. Brookings has always championed American empire, and I reported even recently on a Brookings ‘study’ of this type, by headlining “Brookings Wants More Villages Firebombed in Ukraine’s ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’.”(It’s actually an operation against the residents of the part of Ukraine that had voted 90%+ for the Ukrainian leader whom the Obama Administration had justoverthrown. The residents there had refused to accept Obama’s imposed regime.) The intended defeat of Russia is to come not only in the competition over oil and gas (such as between the Arabic oil potentates and Russia), but also by extending NATO right up to Russia’s borders, such as by installing next-door in Ukraine a rabidly anti-Russian government, via a coup in February 2014. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t like it when Nikita Khrushchev tried something similar against the United States in 1962. It was called “the Cuban Missile Crisis.”) The evidence is clear and overwhelming, though almost entirely absent in U.S. ‘news’ media, that America’s aristocracy place vastly higher priority upon defeating Russia than upon defeating Islamic jihad. (The implicit message to the families of America’s 9/11 victims is: “Just get lost.” But that subtle message from the aristocrats isn’t on America’s ‘news,’ either. Only their PR is.)

In fact, I provided essential background for this development, on August 16th, headlining “How & Why the U.S. Media Do Propaganda Against Russia.” This is a position by the U.S. “Establishment,” which is the entire network of think tanks and other fronts that are financed by the U.S. aristocracy (tax-free, moreover, to the aristocrats who finance these operations) so as to conquer Russia in order that the U.S. aristocracy will win unchallengeable global control, over every other nation’s aristocracy. I documented there that not only the Republican Party but the Obama-Clinton or “Establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, have been fully in agreement with Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 statement against Russia, which Obama publicly condemned at the time, that, “this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”; and Obama’s very public attack against that statement helped him win the 2012 election, though Obama’s second Administration has actually been carrying out Romney’s policy there.

Obama has many cheerleaders in this global-conquest program, such as his advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is proud to have helped start today’s Islamic jihad movement in order to defeat the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union ended, Brzezinski’s hatred of Russians drove him to continue on as if it hadn’t. The war against “communism” has turned out to have been just a cover-story for these aristocrats’ war for global control, somewhat like the war against Islamic jihadists later morphed into a war against the residents of Ukraine’s pro-Russian far-east. Brzezinski was born to Polish nobility, and he retains that hatred from his childhood, which is why he has been so useful to America’s aristocrats, in order to help make the defeat of Russia into a “bipartisan” issue, and not merely an issue for Romney and the great bulk of America’s aristocrats, who are Republicans.

Basically, what Putin is apparently doing here is to go beyond the theatrics of Western aristocracies, the aristocracies that are led by America’s, and finally now to lay down the gauntlet, in Syria, against Islamic jihad. As I have previously documented, Islamic jihad is financed virtually entirely by multimillion-dollar individual contributions not only by the Saudi royal family, but also by the royals of the other Arabic oil countries.

Without that constant flow of funds, the Sauds’ operation on their own side for global empire would collapse. Theirs is to be an Islamic global empire, much like America’s Dominionist Christions have (though far less successfully) aspired to creating a global Christian empire. Ever since 1945, the U.S. aristocracy and the Saudi royal family have been united together. Increasingly in the decades after the end of communism, the only thing that remains after the beast of “The Cold War” is the skeleton of expanding the American aristocracy’s empire, still married to the skeleton of the Sauds’ imperial ambitions. It could become an Earth-killing embrace: skeletons all-around and everywhere.

In one of the rare mainstream U.S. news reports about the unity between Arabic royals and the international Islamic jihad movement, America’s PBS “Frontline” documented that Islamic jihad is taught in schools that are financed by the Saudi royal family.

If the current report in German Economic News is true, then America’s President Obama will need to reassess his entire foreign policy, which has — overtly now, during his second Administration (after he had successfully fooled the American public to think that he didn’t agree with Romney) — been virtually obsessed with defeating Russia.

The U.S. regime has even bragged about its ability to stir up fear against Russia around the world.

America’s alliance with the Islamic jihad movement seems now to be directly challenged by Putin. If Obama is to continue his effort to replace the secular Shiite Syrian regime by an Islamic Sunni regime (one that will be controlled by the Sauds, and/or by the Qatari royal family the Thanis), the U.S. will then face the prospect of war against Russia, much as Obama has already built in Ukraine via his 2014 coup there, which is still prohibited from being reported about in the West — except via a few independent authentic news media (the few that aren’t controlled by aristocrats), which few (such as you are now reading) are allowed because they have only small audiences. As with the samizdat literature during the former Soviet Union, the truth is thus marginalized in the now overwhelmingly fascist-controlled, U.S.-dominated, West.

For further background on this, see my August 13th report, “Meet the ‘Moderates’ the U.S. Is Supporting in Syria: They’re al-Qaeda.”

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Russian troops 'fighting alongside Assad's army against Syrian rebels'

Russian troops are said to be 'fighting alongside Assad's army against Syrian rebels' Photo: @ValkryV

The Telegraph,

2 September, 2015

Russian troops are fighting alongside pro-Assad forces in Syria, state television in Damascus and several reports have claimed.

The video footage claimed to show troops and a Russian armoured vehicle fighting Syrian rebels alongside President Bashar al-Assad's troops in Latakia.

It is reportedly possible to hear Russian being spoken by the troops in the footage.

In further indications of Russian "mission creep" in Syria, a Twitter account linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch, published images of what appeared to be Russian planes and drones flying over Idli.

#Syria Nusra linked acc. posted pics of Russian made drone & jets flying over Western #Idlib. Huge if true. pic.twitter.com/1xPuUbD9an

— Green lemon (@green_lemonnn) September 2, 2015

And a Russian naval vessel was photographed heading south through the Bosphorus strait carrying large amounts of military equipment, according to social media and a shipping blog.

While Russian military advisers are thought to have been in Syria for months, as the Kremlin tries to support its key Middle East ally, if confirmed, this would mark the first evidence of troops fighting on the front line.

It is possible the Russians in the state television clip could have been contractors, thereby putting some distance between themselves and the Kremlin.

#Breaking - #Russian soldiers were viewed in #Zabadani while fighting for #Assad regime. #Syria pic.twitter.com/tZn3rXP52n

— Levent Kemal (@ValkryV) August 31, 2015

An unnamed activist with the Syrian rebel group the Free Syrian Army told The Times: “The Russians have been there a long time.

"There are more Russian officials who came to Slunfeh in recent weeks. We don’t know how many but I can assure you there has been Russian reinforcement.”

Russia is also delaying the launch of an international investigation aimed at assigning blame for chemical weapon attacks in Syria, UN Security Council diplomats said on Wednesday, though Moscow's UN envoy said the holdup was for technical reasons.

In a letter to the 15-nation council last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlined his plans for an investigation into toxic gas attacks in Syria, to be conducted by the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The council was supposed to respond to Ban's letter within five days. The deadline lapsed on Tuesday and no response has been sent.

Several council diplomats said Russia, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, was hesitating. Asked about it at a news conference, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin played down concerns about a delay.

"The most important thing is to make sure we know what is going to happen and the mechanism will work as effectively as it can," he said.

Russian Military Forces Arrive In Syria, Set Forward Operating Base Near Damascus

Zero Hedge,

1 September, 2015

While military direct intervention by US, Turkish, and Gulf forces over Syrian soil escalates with every passing day, even as Islamic State forces capture increasingly more sovereign territory, in the central part of the country, the Nusra Front dominant in the northwestern region province of Idlib and the official "rebel" forces in close proximity to Damascus, the biggest question on everyone's lips has been one: would Putin abandon his protege, Syria's president Assad, to western "liberators" in the process ceding control over Syrian territory which for years had been a Russian national interest as it prevented the passage of regional pipelines from Qatar and Saudi Arabia into Europe, in the process eliminating Gazprom's - and Russia's - influence over the continent.

As recently as a month ago, the surprising answer appeared to be an unexpected "yes", as we described in detail in "The End Draws Near For Syria's Assad As Putin's Patience "Wears Thin." Which would make no sense: why would Putin abdicate a carefully cultivated relationship, one which served both sides (Russia exported weapons, provides military support, and in exchange got a right of first and only refusal on any traversing pipelines through Syria) for years, just to take a gamble on an unknown future when the only aggressor was a jihadist spinoff which had been created as byproduct of US intervention in the region with the specific intention of achieving precisely this outcome: overthrowing Assad (see "Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US "Created" ISIS As A "Tool" To Overthrow Syria's President Assad").

As it turns out, it may all have been just a ruse. Because as Ynet reports, not only has Putin not turned his back on Assad, or Syria, but the Russian reinforcements are well on their way. Reinforcements for what? Why to fight the evil Islamic jihadists from ISIS of course, the same artificially created group of bogeyman that the US, Turkey, and Saudis are all all fighting. In fact, this may be the first world war in which everyone is "fighting" an opponent that everyone knows is a proxy for something else.

According to Ynet, Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state.

And just like the US and Turkish air forces are supposedly in the region to "eradicate the ISIS threat", there can't be any possible complaints that Russia has also decided to take its fight to the jihadists - even if it is doing so from the territory of what the real goal of US and Turkish intervention is - Syria. After all, it is a free for all against ISIS, right?

From Ynet:

According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for all intents and purposes, as a Russian forward operating base.

 

In the coming weeks thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisors, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and the pilots who will operate the aircraft.

The Israeli outlet needless adds that while the current makeup of the Russian expeditionary force is still unknown, "there is no doubt that Russian pilots flying combat missions in Syrian skies will definitely change the existing dynamics in the Middle East."

Why certainly: because in one move Putin, who until this moment had been curiously non-commital over Syria's various internal and exteranl wars, just made the one move the puts everyone else in check: with Russian forces in Damascus implicitly supporting and guarding Assad, the western plan instantly falls apart.

It gets better: if what Ynet reports is accurate, Iran's brief tenure as Obama's BFF in the middle east is about to expire:

Western diplomatic sources recently reported that a series of negotiations had been held between the Russians and the Iranians, mainly focusing on ISIS and the threat it poses to the Assad regime.

The infamous Iranian Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani recently visited Moscow in the framework of these talks. As a result the Russians and the Iranians reached a strategic decision: Make any effort necessary to preserve Assad's seat of power, so that Syria may act as a barrier, and prevent the spread of ISIS and Islamist backed militias into the former Soviet Islamic republics.

See: the red herring that is ISIS can be used just as effectively for defensive purposes as for offensive ones. And since the US can't possibly admit the whole situation is one made up farce, it is quite possible that the world will witness its first regional war when everyone is fighting a dummy, proxy enemy which doesn't really exist, when in reality everyone is fighting everyone else!

That said, we look forward to Obama explaining the American people how the US is collaborating with the one mid-east entity that is supporting not only Syria, but now is explicitly backing Putin as well.

It gets better: Ynet adds that "Western diplomatic sources have emphasized that the Obama administration is fully aware of the Russian intent to intervene directly in Syria, but has yet to issue any reaction... The Iranians and the Russians- with the US well aware- have begun the struggle to reequip the Syrian army, which has been left in tatters by the civil war. They intend not only to train Assad's army, but to also equip it. During the entire duration of the civil war, the Russians have consistently sent a weapons supply ship to the Russian held port of Tartus in Syria on a weekly basis. The ships would bring missiles, replacement parts, and different types of ammunition for the Syrian army."

Finally, it appears not only the US military-industrial complex is set to profit from the upcoming war: Russian dockbuilders will also be rewarded:

Arab media outlets have recently published reports that Syria and Russia were looking for an additional port on the Syrian coast, which will serve the Russians in their mission to hasten the pace of the Syrian rearmament.

If all of the above is correct, the situation in the middle-east is set to escalate very rapidly over the next few months, and is likely set to return to the face-off last seen in the summer of 2013 when the US and Russian navies were within earshot of each other, just off the coast of Syria, and only a last minute bungled intervention by Kerry avoided the escalation into all out war. Let's hope Kerry has it in him to make the same mistake twice.

'No Russian jets sent to Syria' - military source on 'expeditionary force' report

RT,

1 September, 2015

No Russian jets were deployed to Syria in order to launch attacks against Islamic State militants (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) and Syrian rebels, a military source told RT, dismissing reports in Israeli media.

"There has been no redeployment of Russian combat aircraft to the Syrian Arab Republic,” the source told RT on Tuesday. “The Russian Air Force is at its permanent bases and carrying out normal troop training and combat duty.”

On Monday, the Israeli news site Ynet News cited Western diplomats as saying that a Russian “expeditionary force” has arrived in Syria to set up camp at a government airbase near Damascus in order to lead an offensive against IS militants and rebel-aligned targets.

The report added that “thousands of Russian military personnel are set to touch down in Syria, including advisers, instructors, logistics personnel, technical personnel, members of the aerial protection division, and pilots who will operate the aircraft.”

The report’s author, Alex Fishman, who was contacted by RT, refused to comment on the legitimacy of his source.

“…I am not talking about my sources, sorry,” he said. “I’m not publishing something without a legitimate source. I’ve been working for the last 40 years in the military field. So you can understand that it’s a very,very legitimate source.”

Moscow has denied plans to station troops in Syria. On August 4, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the involvement of Russian military in the Syrian conflict “is not on the agenda.”

READ MORE: Russia hosts Syrian opposition to promote broad anti-ISIS coalition efforts

Nevertheless, Russia has strongly supported the formation of an anti-IS coalition that would include Syria and other international and regional powers. President Vladimir Putin and his Egyptian counterpart stressed the importance of such a front during their meeting in Moscow on August 26.

Previously, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with a top Syrian opposition leader in Moscow. Lavrov and the Syrian National Coalition leader Khaled Khoja discussed a potential political settlement in the war-torn country as well as forming a broad coalition to fight the militants. According to Moscow, the coalition against IS would bring together the Syrian and Iraqi armies, the Kurds and those parts of the armed opposition that represent the Syrian people.

The US-led coalition which has been conducting airstrikes on IS targets in Syria since last September has proved incapable of beating the militants. The current number of IS fighters is estimated to have remained unchanged since last August, according to US defense officials.

READ MORE: Putin’s initiative to create ‘united front’ to fight ISIS intrigues US, allies – Lavrov

Moscow has previously stressed that the jihadists are a common enemy of the international community, urging the US to recognize President Bashar Assad’s forces as a partner in the fight against IS in Syria. Lavrov has said that, while the US has worked with Assad as a “fully legitimate partner in destroying chemical arms,” it refuses to cooperate with him in the fight against terrorism.

Washington has reiterated its long-standing claim that the current Syrian regime has no legitimacy. The US has also urged the ousting of Assad and his government, which Russia thinks would lead to IS seizing power in Syria.