Week Nine of the Russian Intervention in Syria: the Empire strikes back
The
Saker
Considering the remarkable success of the Russian intervention in Syria, at least so far, it should not have come as a surprise that the AngloZionist Empire would strike back. The only question was how and when. We now know the answer to that question.
On
November 24th the Turkish Air force did something absolutely
unprecedented in recent history: it deliberately shot down another
country’s military aircraft even though it was absolutely obvious
that this aircraft presented no threat whatsoever to Turkey or the
Turkish people. The Russian Internet is full of more or less official
leaks about how this was done. According to these versions, the Turks
maintained 12 F-16 on patrol along the border ready to attack, they
were guided by AWACS aircraft and “covered” by USAF F-15s in case
of an immediate Russian counter-attack. Maybe. Maybe not. But this
hardly matters because what is absolutely undeniable is that the USA
and NATO immediately took “ownership” of this attack by giving
their full support to Turkey.
NATO went as far as to declare that it
would send aircraft and ships to protect Turkey as
it it had been Russia who had attacked Turkey. As for the USA, not
only did it fully back Turkey, it
now also categorically denies that there is any evidence that Turkey
is purchasing Daesh oil.
Finally, as was to be expected, the
USA is now sending The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group into
the eastern Mediterranean,
officially to strike Daesh but, in reality, to back Turkey and
threaten Russia. Even the
Germans are now sending their own aircraft, but with the specific
orders not to share any info with the Russians.
So
what is really going on here?
Simple: the Empire correctly identified the weakness of the Russian force in Syria, and it decided to use Turkey to provide itself an element of plausible deniability. This attack is probably only the first step of a much larger campaign to “push back” Russia from the Turkish border. The next step, apparently, includes the dispatching of western forces into Syria, initially only as ‘advisors’, but eventually as special forces and forward air controllers. The US and Turkish Air Forces will play the primary role here, with assorted Germans and UK aircraft providing enough diversity to speak of an “international coalition”. As for the French, stuck between their Russian counterparts and their NATO “allies”, they will remain as irrelevant as ever: Hollande caved in, again (what else?). Eventually, NATO will create a de-facto safe heaven for its “moderate terrorists” in northern Syria and use it as a base to direct an attack on Raqqa. Since any such intervention will be completely illegal, the argument of the need to defend the Turkmen minority will be used, R2P and all. The creation of a NATO-protected safe heaven for “moderate terrorists” could provide the first step from breaking up Syria into several smaller statelets.
If
that is really the plan, then the shooting down of the SU-24 sends a
powerful message to Russia: we are ready to risk a war to push you
back – are you ready to go to war? The painful answer will be that
no, Russia is not prepared to wage a war against the entire Empire
over Syria, simply because she does not have the capabilities to do
so.
As
I have already mentioned many times now, Syria is beyond the Russian
power projection capability (roughly 1000km), especially if that
power projection has to be executed through hostile territory (which
Turkey most definitely is). So far, the Russians have succeeded,
brilliantly, to organize and support their small force in Syria, but
that in no way indicates a Russian capability to support a major air
operation over Syria or, even less so, a ground operation. The fact
is that the Russian intervention in Syria was always a risky and
difficult one, and it did not take the Empire much time to capitalize
on this. Though I get a lot of flak from flag-wavers and “hurray
patriots” for saying this, but the fact is that Russia cannot
‘protect’ Syria from the US, NATO or even CENTCOM. At least not
in purely military terms. This does not mean that Russia does not
have retaliatory options. Russia has already engaged in the
following:
Economic
sanctions:
Russia has declared a number of sanctions against Turkey,
including the
freezing of the Turkish Stream project.
Furthermore, Russian tourism in Turkey – a huge source of revenue –
is most likely to dwindle down to a tiny what it used to be: Russians
will not be banned from going to Turkey, but no tours or packages
will be offered by Russian travel agencies. Some Turkish goods will
be banned in Russia, and Turks will not be invited to bid for various
types of contracts. All in all, these sanctions will hurt Turkey, but
not in a major way.
Political
sanctions:
here Russia will use one of her most terrifying weapons: the truth.
The Russian military presented
a devastating series of photos and videos shot
by Russian air and space assets proving that Turkey does, indeed,
purchase oil from Daesh. What was especially shocking about this
evidence is that it showed the truly immense scale of the smuggling:
one photo showed 1’722 oil trucks in in Deir Ez-Zor region while
another one showed 8’500 oil tankers are used by Daesh to transport
up 200’000 barrels of oil. What these figures mean is that not only
is this smuggling organized at the level of the Turkish state, but it
is also absolutely obvious that the USA knows everything about it.
Predictably,
the western media made no mention of the actual evidence, it only
spoke of “images the Russians claim to show”, but the damage is
still done, especially in the long term. Now everybody with a modicum
of intelligence knows that Erdogan is a lying crook. More
importantly, it has now become undeniable that Turkey is not only an
ally, but a patron and sponsor of Daesh. Finally, in the light of
this evidence, it also becomes rather obvious why Turkey decided to
shoot down the Russian SU-24: because the Russians were bombing the
Daesh to Turkey smuggling routes.
The
final blow to the prestige and credibility of Erdogan and Turkey came
from Vladimir Putin himself who, in his annual address to the
Parliament said:
We know who are stuffing pockets in Turkey and letting terrorists prosper from the sale of oil they stole in Syria. The terrorists are using these receipts to recruit mercenaries, buy weapons and plan inhuman terrorist attacks against Russian citizens and against people in France, Lebanon, Mali and other states. We remember that the militants who operated in the North Caucasus in the 1990s and 2000s found refuge and received moral and material assistance in Turkey. We still find them there.
Meanwhile, the Turkish people are kind, hardworking and talented. We have many good and reliable friends in Turkey. Allow me to emphasize that they should know that we do not equate them with the certain part of the current ruling establishment that is directly responsible for the deaths of our servicemen in Syria.
We will never forget their collusion with terrorists. We have always deemed betrayal the worst and most shameful thing to do, and that will never change. I would like them to remember this – those in Turkey who shot our pilots in the back, those hypocrites who tried to justify their actions and cover up for terrorists.
I don’t even understand why they did it. Any issues they might have had, any problems, any disagreements we knew nothing about could have been settled in a different way. Plus, we were ready to cooperate with Turkey on all the most sensitive issues it had; we were willing to go further, where its allies refused to go. Allah only knows, I suppose, why they did it. And probably, Allah has decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their mind and reason.
But, if they expected a nervous or hysterical reaction from us, if they wanted to see us become a danger to ourselves as much as to the world, they won’t get it. They won’t get any response meant for show or even for immediate political gain. They won’t get it.
Our actions will always be guided primarily by responsibility – to ourselves, to our country, to our people. We are not going to rattle the sabre. But, if someone thinks they can commit a heinous war crime, kill our people and get away with it, suffering nothing but a ban on tomato imports, or a few restrictions in construction or other industries, they’re delusional. We’ll remind them of what they did, more than once. They’ll regret it. We know what to do.
Of course, in a society thoroughly habituated to lying, dishonesty and hypocrisy, these are “only” words, and they shall be ignored. But in the Middle-East and the rest of the world, these are powerful words which the Turks will have a very hard time “washing off” from their reputation.
Military
measures:
these are limited, of course, but not irrelevant. First, Russia has
now admitted that S-400 are now in Syria (I suspect they were there
all along). Second, Russia
has began building a 2nd air
base,
this time in Shaayrat, in central Syria. If this base is indeed
built, then bringing in a few Russian AWACS and/or MiG-31s would make
sense. Third, Russia will now used more modern SU-34 equipped with
advanced air-to-air missiles in northern Syria and Russian strike
aircraft will now be escorted by dedicated SU-30SM fighters. This
combination of measures will make it much harder for the Turks to
repeat such an attack, but I personally doubt that they have any such
intentions, at least not in the immediate future.
Evaluation:
In
order to fully understand what is happening now we need to look at
the bigger picture. The first major consequence of the shooting down
of the Russian SU-24 is that NATO
has now become an impunity alliance.
Now that the precedent has been set by Turkey’s act of war on
Russia, because that is what this shooting down undeniably was, any
NATO member can now do the same thing while feeling protected by the
alliance. If tomorrow, say, the Latvians decide to strafe a Russian
Navy ship in the Baltic Sea or if the Poles shoot down a Russian
aircraft over Kaliningrad, they will immediately get the ‘protection’
of NATO just like Turkey now did: the USA will fully endorse the
Latvian/Polish version of the events, the Secretary General of NATO
will offer to dispatch more forces to Latvia/Poland to “protect”
these countries from any “threat” from “the east” and the
world’s corporate media will turn a blind eye to any evidence of
Latvian/Polish aggression. This is an extremely dangerous development
as it gives a strong incentive to any small country to deal with its
inferiority complex by should its “courage” and “determination”
to challenge Russia even if, of course, this is done by hiding behind
NATO’s back.
NATO
is also deliberately escalating its war on Russia by admitting
Montenegro into the Alliance and by re-starting talks about admitting
Georgia. In a purely military sense, the incorporation of Montenegro
into NATO makes no difference whatsoever, but in political terms this
is yet another way for the West to thumb its nose at Russia and say
“see, we will even incorporate your historical allies into our
Empire and there is nothing you can do about it”. As for Georgia,
the main purpose behind the discussion of its incorporation into NATO
is to vindicate the “Saakashvili line”, i.e. to reward aggression
towards Russia. Here again, there is nothing Russia can do.
We
thus are facing an extremely dangerous situation:
- The Russian forces in Syria are comparatively weak and isolated
- Turkey can, and will, continue its provocations under the cover of NATO
- The West is now preparing an (illegal) intervention inside Syria
- The western intervention will be made against Syria and Russia
- NATO politicians now have an easy way to score “patriotic” points by provoking Russia
If
we strip all the NATO verbiage about “defending our members” what
is happening now is that the Empire has now apparently decided that
going down the road to war is safe because Russia will not dare to
“start” a war. In other words, this is a game of chicken in which
one side dares the other to do something about it. This is exactly
what Putin was referring to when he said:
If they expected a nervous or hysterical reaction from us, if they wanted to see us become a danger to ourselves as much as to the world, they won’t get it. They won’t get any response meant for show or even for immediate political gain. They won’t get it. Our actions will always be guided primarily by responsibility – to ourselves, to our country, to our people
What
the imperial deep state is missing is the fact that Russia
might not have a choice but to confront the Empire.
Yes, the Russians do not want war, but the problem here is that,
considering the absolutely reckless arrogance and imperial hubris of
the western elites, every
Russian effort to avoid war is interpreted by the western deep state
as a sign of weakness.
In other words, by
acting responsibly the Russians are now providing an incentive for
the West to act even more irresponsibly.
This is a very, very, dangerous dynamic which the Kremlin will have
to deal with. Putin, apparently, does have something in mind, at
least this is how I understand his warning:
But, if someone thinks they can commit a heinous war crime, kill our people and get away with it, suffering nothing but a ban on tomato imports, or a few restrictions in construction or other industries, they’re delusional. We’ll remind them of what they did, more than once. They’ll regret it. We know what to do.
I
have no idea as to what he might be referring to, but I am confident
that this is not some empty bluster: this was not a threat to
Russia’s enemies, but a promise to the Russian people. I sure hope
that there is a plan because right now we are on a collision course
leading to war. In conclusion, here is a short quote by Putin
western leaders might want to ponder:
Netanyahu and Putin agree to expand and deepen military coordination
ReplyDeletewww.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy-defense/94103-151130-netanyahu-and-putin-agree-to-expand-and-deepen-military-coordination