Russia "Ready To Shoot Down" U.S. Spy Plane

Russia "Ready To Shoot Down" U.S. Spy Plane Behind Attacks On Airbase, Says Defense Official

Zero Hedge,
30 October, 2018

A Russian defense official has doubled down on prior claims that the United States was behind a prior massive drone attack against Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia (alternately Hmeimim), which has further come under sporadic waves of attack by small armed drones which have appeared increasingly sophisticated. 

Vladimir Shamanov, head of the lower parliamentary house's defense committee and a former airborne troops commander, warned, according to a translation of his Tuesday statement by Russian Market:

In case of another U.S. drone attack on Russian Military Base in Syria, Russia is ready to shoot-down that plane. 

The threat was made against an American spy plane possibly being in the area near Syria to coordinate any future attack. Last week the Kremlin said, based on new intelligence provided by the Russian defense ministry, that a major attack on Khmeimim last January was coordinated by a US P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane. 

The nighttime January 8th attack which involved 13 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in total — 10 approached Khmeimim while 3 attempted an attack on the naval facility in Tartus. That significant attack came after a prior New Year's eve drone assault actually damaged Russian jets parked at the airbase. 

Last weekend President Putin himself addressed the uptick in drone attacks especially over just the past two months while in discussions with the leaders of Germany, France and Germany in Istanbul, according to TASS: 

Terrorists continue attacks in Idlib, with dozens of drones shot down near the Russian military base in the country in the past two months or so, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters after a four-party summit on Syria held in Istanbul on Saturday.

"Russia reserves the right to support the Syrian government if terrorists carry out provocations from the Idlib zone," Putin said. "Quite recently - I have informed my counterparts - artillery strikes were delivered from the Idlib zone in the direction of Aleppo. In the recent six weeks to two months, our air defense has shot down 50 aerial vehicles near our base in Hmeymim."

Though at the Istanbul summit the Russian president stopped short of blaming the U.S. for coordinating the attacks — something that Pentagon officials have vehemently denied — the words came just days after Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin went public with details of a Russian intelligence report at a plenary session of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on security last Thursday: "Thirteen drones moved according to common combat battle deployment, operated by a single crew. During all this time the American Poseidon-8 reconnaissance plane patrolled the Mediterranean Sea area for eight hours," the deputy defense minister said

These latest threats "to shoot down that plane" also follow the mistaken downing of a Russian Ilyushin-20 reconnaissance plane in mid-September with 15 crew members on board after Israel launched a massive attack on Syrian government targets. Following the incident, for which Israel expressed regret, Russia had vowed an "adequate response" and effectively declared a "no-fly zone" in the area of its assets in Syria, and further moved forward with transferring S-300 air defense systems to the Syrian government. 

With Russia's heightened rhetoric of late, it appears to be anticipating the next potential major incident over the skies of Syria — only this time Moscow has raised the stakes as it vows to follow through on attacking American or other foreign aircraft behind attacks on Russian bases and aircraft in Syria. 

Stephen Cohen: Why no opposition to the New Cold War?

Why No 80s-Style Opposition to New Cold War? - Stephen Cohen Podcast

" ... the systematic demonization of Putin several years after he came to power in 2000."

Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Why, unlike during the preceding 45-year Cold War, is there no significant American mainstream opposition to the new (and more dangerous) one? Cohen poses this question as a kind of paradox for tonight’s discussion and formulates it as follows:

During the preceding Cold war, especially from the late 1960s through the 1980s, there were many anti–Cold War, or pro-détente, voices in the American political-media mainstream.

Part 1 of the podcast:

Part 2 of the podcast:

This was the case in Congress, the White House, in the most influential print and broadcast media outlets, at universities and think tanks, at the grassroots level, in elections—and even in major US corporations. (CEOs founded the original American Committee for East-West Accord decades ago, which Cohen and others recreated not long ago. See eastwestaccord.com.)

That is, public discussion and debate about US relations with Russia were the norm during the preceding Cold War, as befits a democracy. As an example, Cohen recalls that the first President George Bush convened at Camp David, in November 1989, virtually his entire national-security team to attend a debate between Cohen, then at Princeton, and Harvard professor Richard Pipes on the pressing issue of whether détente with the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev should be expanded or reversed.

Today’s Cold War is even more dangerous in important ways. Its epicenter is not in faraway Berlin but directly on Russia’s borders, in Ukraine and the Baltic states. Mutually restraining rules of conduct, developed after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, scarcely exist, as illustrated by ongoing tit-for-tat sanctions that could lead to a full rupture in diplomatic relations between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

Cooperative relations and institutions nourished over decades are unraveling or already nullified. A renewed nuclear-arms race, once thought relegated to the past by Reagan and Gorbachev, is already under way, along with provocative conventional-arms maneuvers on both sides.

Today’s Kremlin leader is demonized irrationally in the United States in ways that Soviet leaders were not. And, of course, neither Russia nor its political ruling class is any longer Communist but instead professed capitalists and, mostly, religious believers.

And yet, today there is no significant anti–Cold War opposition in mainstream American politics—few, if any, such voices in Congress, in the most influential newspapers or on leading television/radio broadcasts, in either major political party, at universities or most Washington think tanks. Even the once large-scale, well-organized grassroots anti-nuke movement that animated pro-détente politics in regional elections has all but vanished.

Public debates and political struggles btween “hawks and doves” on Russia policy no longer exist in mainstream America. Everywhere, hawks prevail and the doves are silent, even in corporations with major investments in Russia.

Cohen cannot explain this exceedingly dangerous paradox, only comment on some possible or partial explanatory factors:

§ Most recently, widespread hostility to President Trump and demonizing of Russian President Putin have become major factors. Mainstream American political, media, and other figures skeptical about current US Russia policies worry about being labeled “pro-Trump,” who campaigned in favor of more US-Russian cooperation, or “pro-Putin.”

That anyone need worry about such slurs is deplorable, but that they do is perhaps understandable.

But the new Cold War began long before Trump, as a bipartisan policy with little if any opposition, and the systematic demonization of Putin several years after he came to power in 2000. (Cohen refers here to the latter chapters of the expanded paperback edition of his book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives.) So this alone is not an adequate explanation.

§ Neo-McCarthyism, which has grown considerably since Trump’s election in 2016, has certainly stifled anti–Cold War opposition. As official investigations into alleged “collusion with Russia” grow more promiscuous and well-funded campaigns to ferret out purported “Russian disinformation” in the US media unfold, a self-censoring chill has descended on political life.

No one wishes to be suspected of “collusion with the Kremlin” or of conveying “Russian propaganda”—or worse. (In this regard, Carter Page seems to be the first to have filed a defamation suit against a major American news outlet.)

This is not, of course, merely self-censorship. Major media outlets regularly exclude critics of US Russia policy and proponents of alternative approaches from their news reports, op-ed pages, and TV and radio panels. This, too, is not, however, a full explanation.

Media often reflect currents in the larger political establishment and in society.

§ There is considerable talk about a “deep state” that has thwarted semi-détente initiatives first by President Obama and now by President Trump, an invisible power that may even have created “Russiagate” for that purpose.

Cohen, however, is not certain about what is meant by a concealed “deep state,” since high-level cold warriors are amply visible and audible, from Hillary Clinton and her well-funded acolytes to Obama’s intelligence chiefs and the editors and producers of leading media outlets. “Deep state” may just mean America’s most powerful political elite.

§ On the other hand, some have argued over the years, and again today, that the persistence of Cold War politics and weakness of anti–Cold War opposition is best explained by a nativist American social tradition that “needs an enemy,” and more often than not Russia has been assigned this role.

Having grown up in Kentucky and lived in Indiana, Florida, and New Jersey, Cohen finds no evidence for this “blame the people” explanation. The fault lies, he is convinced, with America’s governing elites.

§ This is a separate, longer discussion, but Cohen points to two recent developments, both subsequently blamed significantly on Putin. The first was the collapse of US political-media elite expectations that post-Soviet Russia would become, during the “transition” of the 1990s, Washington’s junior and compliant partner in world affairs.

When those expectations and related US policies ended in disaster in the late 1990s and Russia took a different course after 2000, Washington elites blamed not their own illusions and ill-conceived policies but Putin. And they continue to do so.

More recently, but similarly, as the US-led international “order” created decades ago crumbles, from Europe to the Middle East, with disparate symptoms from Brexit to Trump’s election—again, US elites and “thought leaders,” rather than consider profound historical changes and their own prior policies, resort to blaming Putin’s Russia.

However explained, Cohen concludes, the near-total absence of significant anti–Cold War opposition in American politics today is a grave threat to democracy and international peace.

---

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.

Source: The Nation

Leaked email says CIA wants to end Russophobia campaign in favor of Iran war

Leaked email: CIA wants to end Russophobia campaign in favor of Iran war (<<== Fake news!)

Vineyard of the Saker,

3 August, 2017

by Ramin Mazaheri

(Note: This leaked email has not yet been verified by WikiLeaks:)

Date: 2017-07-31

Source: Langley CIA HQ

Classification: SECRET/NOFORN/MLBNLCSWS
S E C R E T

SECTION 08 OF 1,843 WASHINGTON – AC0871108

SUBJECT: CIA Sub-Deputy says anti-Russia campaign detracting from war effort against Iran

CLASSIFICATION APPROVED BY: CLASSIFIED
REASON: 1.4 (a), (g)

Since October 2016 CIA operatives have successfully stepped up operations both around and within Iran.

I can report that Stuxnet 2.0 has been implanted: Iran’s radar and air traffic control will be essentially nullified once hostilities begin.

Trusted handlers have created an effective network to coordinate the neutralization of their speedboat capabilities in the Gulf, meaning our aircraft carriers will encounter little resistance.

CIA operatives inside their rocket program have the self-destruct codes to knock out their satellite capabilities. Iran’s technological advancements in this area remain a commercial threat to Western telecommunications dominance. Our prolonged delay of war prevents us from ending this continued embarrassment.

But maintaining public focus on Russia has indeed been the perfect cover for ramping up our anti-Iran activities.

The public has been lulled to sleep on Iran, and all they need is to be shaken awake.

That brings me to the point of this email:

Everything is clearly in place to finally launch war against Iran, but we risk missing this opportunity due to a refusal to let go of the Russophobia campaign. Therefore, I must insist that we terminate that campaign so that Iran can resume its rightful and historic place as US public enemy number one.

I fear that many at Langley have started to believe their own Russophobic hype, but I remind everyone the anti-Putin campaign was always supposed to be just a cover: We have never been able to swing public opinion in favor of war against Iran, but we correctly reasoned that war with Iran would look much more appealing after months of threats of war with Russia.

However, I wonder if the Russophobia campaign hasn’t metastasized beyond our control?

Worrying signs

I first started to have questions when Langley bathroom graffiti started to lampoon Putin instead of Khamenei. The very few limericks I have recently seen against Khamenei have even misspelled his name.

It’s sloppy, and it indicates a worrying lack of familiarity with what should be our primary target: Iran.

I became more alarmed after our latest weekly briefing with Rachel Maddow. She insists on staying with Russia because they get her better ratings: she says that Iranian women who hate their Revolution but still wear hejabs are “not hot”.

Well of course they aren’t! What does she think a hejab is for?

But we have destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – how can we leave Iran out of our plans for totally leveling Muslim countries for trying to be Muslim? That’s just plain un-American! Any job worth doing is a job worth doing right!

Let’s not break with years of planning just because the Russophobia campaign has succeeded beyond anyone’s imagination.

Frankly, we all know who to pin this screw-up on: Hillary.

Hillary knew it had to be Iran and THEN Russia. Hell, it was her idea! And that’s why she legalized those terrorist psychos the MKO, a group which has as much chance of being accepted as leader as Benedict Arnold did after the American Revolution.

But Trump’s victory threw everything off track. This email is to get back to what we’ve done since 1979 – try to implode Iran, as that idiot John Kerry once accidentally admitted in Paris.

(Reporter’s Note: See below for details)

First of all: It’s not the CIA’s fault Hillary blew the election – we rigged as many vote machines as we could! It’s not our fault some hillbilly counties put their money into K-12 education instead of computerized voting machines.

Frankly, I blame Huma Abedin, because Hillary’s closest aide needs to get blamed for something, right? How can someone so close to power get left off the hook for everything? Maybe if she spent less time with Hillary, then maybe her husband Anthony Weiner wouldn’t be over-revved and texting naked photos, knowwhutI’msayin? Hey FBI! Don’t think Langley has forgotten that’s how you first started searching Clinton’s mails!

I don’t want to say I told you so, but we should have made Hillary’s BFF a Russian instead of a Saudi: Muslims stick together.

And that is why we are trying to break off Kurdistan immediately. But how is that going to happen when 8 million Iranian Kurds show no sign of revolt?!

Iran has made us look bad much longer than Putin

Let’s look at the scoreboard: Since 1979 Iran has been nothing but trouble, but at least Gorby and Yeltsin gave us 15 years of high-quality looting. I mean – y’all have some real short memories: I brought up “Ted Koppel” to some younger operatives and they didn’t even know who he was, and the guy was on TV nightly for years thanks to the hostage crisis! The effectiveness of his toupee ruined my shares in that hair implant corporation!

Where’s our payback been for the hostage crisis? A few murdered scientists? One paltry downed passenger airliner? Decades of economic strangulation? Not nearly enough! And how can we let Iran get away with Revolution? It’s been a terrible precedent!

Let’s forget Hillary and restart at zero: Finally, we have a pro anti-Iran president. Unlike Obama the Muslim. (I guess Indonesia is Shia? Is that why he protected Iran?)

We really lucked out with Trump: He only talked tough on Iran and Cuba during the election campaign, so we caught a major break there. I don’t know why Trump has such an aversion to Iran – could be because he’s from New York City and the Empire State, could be because he’s got major Zionists in his family by marriage, or it could be because one of the last great untapped markets for golf resorts is Iran.

Trump is ready to snap back those snap-back sanctions after every 90-day review and he is just itching for the chance. With such a system in place, how long is the JCPOA going to last, realistically? 180 days? 270? Does anyone really seeing it holding up for years? Our war against Iran is inevitable, so let’s get this war moving, finally!

The Monroe Doctrine set the precedent that the US will not tolerate any interference in our backyard – the Western Hemisphere. Now some of you weren’t there, but I for one definitely recall the Bilderberg Group Doctrine: The US will not tolerate any interference in our backyard – the Milky Way.

What I do know for a fact is that the whole Russia thing has been blown out of proportion by the Democrats – what was supposed to be a diversion is now an obsession, but I’ll be damned if it’s going to cost me Iran!

You should see all the thong bikinis I’ve got warehoused! But how I can overcharge the Pentagon for these “Freedom Fatigues for the Modern Muslim Woman” and airlift them to Iranian Baluchistan while Khamenei is still in power? I’m sure that Maddow will certainly change her tune once we roll those out!

We should have no problem vilifying Iran to the hipster doofus crowd. “Liberating women” worked fine in Afghanistan and it’ll work in Iran.

More resistant snowflakes need to learn Iran that proved its racism and prejudice during the Hostage Crisis when Khomeini allowed the Blacks and women to go free.

Iran is clearly anti-White and misandrist! Especially for a country of Sand Honkys run by male priests!

But I think one of those two accusations will work with the snowflakes, who are not noted for their intellectual rigor.

Let’s cool it with Russia and laser-heat up Iran

What gets me to sleep at night is that I am certain that cooler heads will prevail and that nuclear war against Iran is around the corner. It’s a thought which would comfort anybody in our great nation.

And before I get hung up on charges of treason, let me state for the record: Russia will be next, of course.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day and they didn’t just take over Egypt without first subduing Carthage. I think…I’m not really sure. My fundamentalist Christian school education was a long time ago and, frankly, these new war video games take up a lot of my time these days. They really do simulate the real thing, according to what I’ve read!

Do you see how bored I am thanks to the lack of focus on Iran? And almost none of you visit the Covert Iran War Wing of Langley anymore – you think I don’t want to go lunch with you guys?

Well, I don’t want to get addicted to video games and waste my life away – that’s what my son is for, and we can’t have two in the family.

Let’s get real: Everyone knows our military is outclassed by Russian technology. Heck, when’s the last time we even won a war?

And because we can’t win anymore, breaking up countries is now our thing. We can’t conquer, but we sure are great dividers!

But here’s what those carried away by the Russophobia campaign forget: We already divvied up the USSR! I can’t believe we are going back to this well so soon! One day soon the bottom of that bucket is going to drop out, and the hell to pay will be worse than China calling in their loans.

Let’s take on those fake Islamic Socialists in Iran, finally, as a tune-up. Then we can go mop up Russia before the big showdown – China.

And then after that: those aliens we don’t tell anyone about. Early analysis of their culture reveals dangerously threatening levels of socialist-type thought.

They won’t be laughing at Trump’s “Milky Way Doctrine” once we go public with that, I can assure you!

Yours sincerely and Bilderberg Forever,

CIA Sub-Deputy of Transnational Transitioning

Frederick Q. Snooperwicz

*******

Reporter’s note:

This was indeed a surprising leaked email, on many levels. I can’t reveal my source, of course, but I do sincerely hope that WikiLeaks works overtime to confirm it as soon as possible.

However, I can confirm that US Secretary of State John Kerry did accidentally admit in Paris that he was trying to “implode Iran”. He says it right here in my 2013 Press TV report at the 0:58 mark.

What is amazing is how very quickly he corrected himself after that momentary slip-up. He’s a real professional – you have to give him that.

Even though I caught his mistake, while other more “professional” media organizations did not, my story was almost totally ignored back then. I hope this leaked CIA email scoop affords a new opportunity for people to realize what is the true agenda of the US towards Iran.

Frankly, it took a lot of surfing to find a workable link to that report – it has almost been scrubbed clean from the internet, as have years of reports of mine for Press TV. Many leftist websites have reported the same thing this year, most recently the superb news website the World Socialist Web Site. It seems like this would be a major story for us all to discuss but, alas, we have been quite focused on Russia and, soon it seems, Iran.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.

Russia rejects ceasefire in Aleppo, fighting resumes after Jihadis refuse to leave

Many thanks to the Duran, and especially Alexander Mercouris who are providing some of the best coverage on Syria.

BREAKING: Erdogan calls Putin, pleads for Jihadis to be allowed to leave Aleppo

Alexander Mercouris

The Duran,

14 December, 2016

Turkish President Erdogan makes late night call to Russian President Putin in desperate last bid effort to get Jihadis extracted from Aleppo.

Turkish President Erdogan called Russian President Vladimir Putin late in the evening on Wednesday 14th December 2016 in what looks like a desperate last minute plea by the Turkish leader to try to get the withdrawal of Jihadis from eastern Aleppo restarted.

That the two leaders discussed the situation in Aleppo is clear from the Kremlin’s report of their conversation

“The heads of state continued their ongoing exchange of views on Syria. In particular, they discussed the developments in Aleppo, and emphasised the need to build up joint efforts to improve the humanitarian situation and foster the start of a real political process in Syria.’

Shortly after this conversation took place reports drawing on Jihadi sources began to circulate in the Western media that the plan for the Jihadis to withdraw from eastern Aleppo is back on track, and that the withdrawal will happen shortly.

There has been no confirmation of this however from Moscow or Damascus.  As I said earlier, experience has taught me to assume no agreement supposedly made by Russia until Moscow confirms it.

What is different this time is that Erdogan has now come out into the open as the true broker of the deal, and is no longer hiding behind Turkish intelligence.   

Past experience has taught Erdogan the price of not keeping a promise to Putin.  If he is promising that this time the Jihadis really will leave Aleppo, then he is once again putting his credit with Putin on the line.

Given his past dealings with Erdogan it is doubtful that Putin places much weight on what Erdogan tells him.  Putin must also have doubts as to what influence over the Al-Qaeda led Jihadis in eastern Aleppo Erdogan really has.

Most likely there will be another brief draw down in the fighting of a few hours – though this will be a lot less than a ceasefire – to see whether the Jihadis do actually agree to leave as Erdogan promises. 

With the Jihadis having lost more ground over the course of the day, and with their situation becoming more desperate by the hour, Putin probably calculates he has nothing to lose by giving Erdogan another chance.

This is from earlier

CONFIRMED: Russia rejects ceasefire in Aleppo, fighting resumes after Jihadis refuse to leave

Alexander Mercouris

the Duran,

13 December, 2016

Fighting resumes in Aleppo after Jihadis fail to act on Turkish promise to withdraw from Aleppo and after Russia rejects ceasefire.

Reports circulated throughout the evening of yesterday Tuesday 13th December 2016 of a supposed agreement between the Russian military and Turkish military intelligence to evacuate the remaining Jihadi fighters and civilians from eastern Aleppo.

I have learnt through long experience to doubt the existence of any agreement the Russians are supposed to have entered into until they announce it.

In the event the hours passed and no confirmation of the existence of such an agreement came from Moscow or Damascus though in comments to the UN Security Council Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin did appear to refer to it indirectly.

Instead there was a temporary draw down in fighting in the evening of yesterday, with the Syrian government’s green buses appearing in eastern Aleppo this morning, apparently in order to take the Jihadis away.  None however came, Russian and Syrian reports say the Jihadis fired at the buses, and the fighting has resumed in earnest. 

The Russian military’s Reconciliation Centre at Khmeimim air base in Syria is now saying that the Syrian military will continue its offensive until all the Jihadi fighters in eastern Aleppo are either dead or captured or give up.

What happened?

Piecing things together, it seems unlikely that there was any formal agreement between the Russians and the Turks. However the Russian and Turkish militaries have been in contact with each other since September, and discussions between them about the situation in Aleppo have been underway since at least the first week of November.

it seems that yesterday evening the Turkish military promised the Russians that if there was a draw down in the fighting they would arrange for the Jihadi fighters in eastern Aleppo to leave Aleppo this morning.

The Russians appear to have been skeptical, which is why they failed to make a formal announcement yesterday, and as things turned out they were right not to do so.

The alternative theory, which is being promoted by the Western media today, is that the Syrian government and the Shiite militias in Aleppo objected to the agreement, about which they were supposedly not consulted, and it was this that led to the agreement breaking down this morning.

However the fact that there was indeed a draw down in the fighting last night, and that the green buses appeared this morning, shows that this claim is wrong.

This episode illustrates a recurring problem of the Syrian war.  Though countries like the US and Turkey from time to time purport to enter into agreements with the Russians on behalf of their Jihadi proxies in Syria, their Jihadi proxies then invariably fail to honour them.

The Jihadis refused to withdraw as the Turks promised for two likely reasons:

1. Though it is difficult to discuss the terms of an ‘agreement’ that was never in fact reached, it seems that not all the Jihadis in eastern Aleppo were to be allowed to leave.  The Russians appear to have insisted that the ringleaders and those who carried out the most egregious crimes would not be allowed to leave but would instead be arrested so that they can be put on trial by the Syrian authorities. 

The Russians have a sophisticated intelligence operation in Aleppo, and by now they undoubtedly know who these people are, and everything about them right down to their aliases.  Indeed it is likely they have provided Turkish intelligence with a list of these people over the course of the discussions.

These people are of course the same people who are the local Al-Qaeda commanders in eastern Aleppo.  Since the Russian demand gives them no incentive to allow the other Jihadis to leave, and since they are in a position of authority over the other Jihadis, the Russian demand ensured that they would not allow the other Jihadis to do so.

2. It is doubtful the Jihadis in eastern Aleppo ever actually intended to leave.  Not only are some of them fanatical fighters, sworn to die rather than leave, but their whole strategy is to manipulate the diplomatic process to secure for themselves a ceasefire, which will enable them to stay.

The Russians have repeatedly complained about this, and about the US’s collusion in assisting the Jihadis with this strategy, and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov did so again this morning

“Every time we agree on something, the Americans step back from the agreements. It happened in September, then in December.  We are told: ‘Russia proposes to agree on humanitarian corridors so that the militants will leave, but you should stop fighting first, then, in some days, it will be possible to create such corridors.

No one in Iraq, Libya, or Yemen demands a ceasefire, or a week or two of complete ‘silence,’ before negotiations. But in Syria they call for it.”

The Al-Qaeda leadership in eastern Aleppo seems to have persisted with this strategy yesterday by trying to use the draw down in the fighting which resulted from the Turkish offer in order to hold out for a ceasefire.

That the Western powers are also still pursuing this strategy is shown by what happened at the UN Security Council yesterday. 

With hindsight it now looks as if yesterday’s UN Security Council debate – convened at France’s request – was timed to coincide with the Turkish promise, and was held in order to pressure Russia into agreeing to convert yesterday’s draw down in the fighting into a ceasefire, with yesterday’s atrocity propaganda intended to embarrass the Russians into agreeing to it.

In the event the Russians have made it crystal clear this morning that they are not prepared to agree to a ceasefire, and there is in fact no ceasefire in place.  Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has also rejected the atrocity propaganda, pointing out that as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon admitted two days ago, it is unverified

“I receive information from independent humanitarian organisations firsthand…. No one has confirmed claims about atrocities or kidnappings.”

In summary, last night’s Turkish offer – almost certainly instigated by Turkish President Erdogan, who is coming under pressure from the Islamist part of his political base to do something to help the Jihadis in Aleppo – has bought the Jihadis in eastern Aleppo a few more hours.

It has not however gained them the ceasefire they wanted, and it is most unlikely there will be any more interruptions in the fighting now. 

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is saying he expects the situation in eastern Aleppo to be “resolved” within the next 2 or 3 days, and his words suggest that he expects the issue to be resolved by fighting.