Russia Uses Unprecedented Firepower Against IS in Syria
Nov 18, 2015 18:28:51 GMT -5
Post by PurplePuppy on Nov 18, 2015 18:28:51 GMT -5
Russia Uses Unprecedented Firepower Against Islamic State In Syria
ISIS affiliate Waliyat Sinai has claimed responsibility for the downing of the Russian plane and the death of all 224 people aboard.
Yochanan Visser November 18, 2015 at 10:47am
A day after Russia officially confirmed that the civilian airplane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula at the end of October was downed by a bomb aboard, Russia’s army in Syria stepped up its actions against Islamic State.
ISIS affiliate Waliyat Sinai has claimed responsibility for the downing of the Russian plane and the death of all 224 people aboard. The group filmed the explosion that downed the plane and released the video shortly after the attack. The plane was flying at an altitude of more than 30,000 feet after taking off from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh when an explosion occurred.
Today, Islamic State published details about how the plane was brought down in its Dabiq online magazine. The organization said it downed the plane with an improvised explosive device that was hidden in a soda can.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that he has ordered Special Forces of the Red Army to find and punish those responsible for the attack on the plane and promised a $50 million reward for information that will lead to the arrest of those responsible. The Russian leader also pledged to increase Russia’s military activity in Syria in response to the terrorist attack by Islamic State.
“Our military work in Syria must not only continue. It must be strengthened in such a way so that the terrorists will understand that retribution is inevitable,” Putin declared.
The Russian army didn’t waste time and launched an unprecedented cruise missile assault on Islamic State in Syria earlier today. The Kremlin confirmed that Russian warplanes had fired multiple cruise missiles at Raqqa, the capital of ISIS, and on Islamic State positions in the Aleppo and Idlib Provinces in Syria.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of Russia reported that “the missiles were launched from Tu-160 (Black Jack) and Tu-95 (Bear) warplanes, and said they were among 2,300 sorties carried out by the Russian military in the past 48 days.” ”The 34 cruise missiles destroyed 13 key targets including command post that were used to coordinate ISIS activities in Idlib and Aleppo,” General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, announced.
French government officials later confirmed the Russian strikes on Raqqa, and images of the cruise missiles flying over Syria appeared on social media. The cruise missile attacks on Islamic State were launched after the Russians had briefed the U.S. led anti-ISIS coalition in Qatar.
The Russians will also bring an additional 37 warplanes to Syria “including eight Su-34 (Fullback) strike fighters and four Su-27 fighter jets,” The Russian news agency Sputnik reported.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the international community today to unite on the fate of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Lavrov wants the U.S. and its allies to drop the demand for the resignation of Assad. Moscow wants the Syrian people to decide on Assad’s fate via elections that should be held next year.
“I hope the change in the position of our Western colleagues — which has unfortunately only come about as the result of terrible acts of terror — will spread to other Western partners. That the stance that the real battle with ISIS can only be resolved once the fate of Assad is clear, that this position will put to one side,” said Lavrov.
Lavrov referred to the coordination between France and Russia during the airstrikes on Raqqa at the beginning of this week. The Obama administration and its Western allies, however, have until now ruled out a scenario where Assad stays in power.
The U.S. and its allies have long assessed that getting rid of Assad is a prerequisite for either a limited campaign to eradicate ISIS or for a broad campaign to end the Syrian war. This has not only to do with the war crimes that Assad committed during the four-year-old civil war in Syria, but also with the fact that Assad has colluded with Islamic State to ensure the group’s survival.
A 2014 report by Middle East analyst Kyle Orton summed up the level of this collusion. He mentioned the slitting of oil revenues, the release of Sunni Salafists who ended up in the Islamic State and sharing of intelligence. Bassam Barabandia, a defector in the Syrian Foreign Ministry, later confirmed what Orton wrote.
The former Syrian diplomat wrote in a blog post for MENAsource the following about Assad’s role in the rise of Islamic State:
The Assad plan also included allowing extremist Sunni groups to grow and travel freely in order to complicate any Western support for his opponents. The Assad regime and Iran have meticulously nurtured the rise of al-Qaeda, and then ISIS, in Syria. In his March 2011 speech addressing the protests, Assad claimed that an international terrorist conspiracy sought to topple his government. During this time, Assad released battle-hardened extremists from the infamous Sednaya prison; extremists with no association to the uprisings. These fighters would go on to lead militant groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra.
In conjunction with the terrorist-release policy, Assad was sure to imprison diverse, non-violent, and pro-reform activists by the thousands, many of whom are still in government prisons. These efforts, coupled with relentless barrel bombing, torture, and chemical weapons campaigns, were designed to silence, kill, or displace civilians so that the influence of extremists would fill their absence. Assad was careful to never take any steps to attack ISIS as they grew in power and strength.
The announcement of ISIS’s caliphate is most helpful in draining time and distracting the world from Assad’s destruction of Syrian society. Now that ISIS has fully matured, the Assad regime and Iran offer themselves as partners to the United States.
Secretary of State John Kerry this weekend confirmed that the Obama administration has not changed its position on Assad and is aware of his collusion with Islamic State.
Standing next to Lavrov after their meeting, Kerry said that the Assad regime and Islamic State are “symbiotic.”
But make no mistake, Kerry said – “anybody, please – Assad has cut his own deal with Daesh. They sell oil. He buys oil. They are symbiotic, not real enemies in this. And he has not, when he had a chance over four years, mounted his attacks against Daesh. The Daesh headquarters sat in Raqqa for years. It was never bombed by his bombs. It was children and women and hospitals and schools that were bombed by his bombs.”
“So that is the reality here. And I think for him to try to blame what happed in Paris on anybody other, particularly the West who is trying to save his country and save his people and who is the biggest single donor to the refugees that he has created in order to safeguard them, is beyond insanity. It’s insulting,“ Kerry added.
Video at link
ISIS affiliate Waliyat Sinai has claimed responsibility for the downing of the Russian plane and the death of all 224 people aboard.
Yochanan Visser November 18, 2015 at 10:47am
A day after Russia officially confirmed that the civilian airplane that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula at the end of October was downed by a bomb aboard, Russia’s army in Syria stepped up its actions against Islamic State.
ISIS affiliate Waliyat Sinai has claimed responsibility for the downing of the Russian plane and the death of all 224 people aboard. The group filmed the explosion that downed the plane and released the video shortly after the attack. The plane was flying at an altitude of more than 30,000 feet after taking off from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh when an explosion occurred.
Today, Islamic State published details about how the plane was brought down in its Dabiq online magazine. The organization said it downed the plane with an improvised explosive device that was hidden in a soda can.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that he has ordered Special Forces of the Red Army to find and punish those responsible for the attack on the plane and promised a $50 million reward for information that will lead to the arrest of those responsible. The Russian leader also pledged to increase Russia’s military activity in Syria in response to the terrorist attack by Islamic State.
“Our military work in Syria must not only continue. It must be strengthened in such a way so that the terrorists will understand that retribution is inevitable,” Putin declared.
The Russian army didn’t waste time and launched an unprecedented cruise missile assault on Islamic State in Syria earlier today. The Kremlin confirmed that Russian warplanes had fired multiple cruise missiles at Raqqa, the capital of ISIS, and on Islamic State positions in the Aleppo and Idlib Provinces in Syria.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of Russia reported that “the missiles were launched from Tu-160 (Black Jack) and Tu-95 (Bear) warplanes, and said they were among 2,300 sorties carried out by the Russian military in the past 48 days.” ”The 34 cruise missiles destroyed 13 key targets including command post that were used to coordinate ISIS activities in Idlib and Aleppo,” General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, announced.
French government officials later confirmed the Russian strikes on Raqqa, and images of the cruise missiles flying over Syria appeared on social media. The cruise missile attacks on Islamic State were launched after the Russians had briefed the U.S. led anti-ISIS coalition in Qatar.
The Russians will also bring an additional 37 warplanes to Syria “including eight Su-34 (Fullback) strike fighters and four Su-27 fighter jets,” The Russian news agency Sputnik reported.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the international community today to unite on the fate of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Lavrov wants the U.S. and its allies to drop the demand for the resignation of Assad. Moscow wants the Syrian people to decide on Assad’s fate via elections that should be held next year.
“I hope the change in the position of our Western colleagues — which has unfortunately only come about as the result of terrible acts of terror — will spread to other Western partners. That the stance that the real battle with ISIS can only be resolved once the fate of Assad is clear, that this position will put to one side,” said Lavrov.
Lavrov referred to the coordination between France and Russia during the airstrikes on Raqqa at the beginning of this week. The Obama administration and its Western allies, however, have until now ruled out a scenario where Assad stays in power.
The U.S. and its allies have long assessed that getting rid of Assad is a prerequisite for either a limited campaign to eradicate ISIS or for a broad campaign to end the Syrian war. This has not only to do with the war crimes that Assad committed during the four-year-old civil war in Syria, but also with the fact that Assad has colluded with Islamic State to ensure the group’s survival.
A 2014 report by Middle East analyst Kyle Orton summed up the level of this collusion. He mentioned the slitting of oil revenues, the release of Sunni Salafists who ended up in the Islamic State and sharing of intelligence. Bassam Barabandia, a defector in the Syrian Foreign Ministry, later confirmed what Orton wrote.
The former Syrian diplomat wrote in a blog post for MENAsource the following about Assad’s role in the rise of Islamic State:
The Assad plan also included allowing extremist Sunni groups to grow and travel freely in order to complicate any Western support for his opponents. The Assad regime and Iran have meticulously nurtured the rise of al-Qaeda, and then ISIS, in Syria. In his March 2011 speech addressing the protests, Assad claimed that an international terrorist conspiracy sought to topple his government. During this time, Assad released battle-hardened extremists from the infamous Sednaya prison; extremists with no association to the uprisings. These fighters would go on to lead militant groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al Nusra.
In conjunction with the terrorist-release policy, Assad was sure to imprison diverse, non-violent, and pro-reform activists by the thousands, many of whom are still in government prisons. These efforts, coupled with relentless barrel bombing, torture, and chemical weapons campaigns, were designed to silence, kill, or displace civilians so that the influence of extremists would fill their absence. Assad was careful to never take any steps to attack ISIS as they grew in power and strength.
The announcement of ISIS’s caliphate is most helpful in draining time and distracting the world from Assad’s destruction of Syrian society. Now that ISIS has fully matured, the Assad regime and Iran offer themselves as partners to the United States.
Secretary of State John Kerry this weekend confirmed that the Obama administration has not changed its position on Assad and is aware of his collusion with Islamic State.
Standing next to Lavrov after their meeting, Kerry said that the Assad regime and Islamic State are “symbiotic.”
But make no mistake, Kerry said – “anybody, please – Assad has cut his own deal with Daesh. They sell oil. He buys oil. They are symbiotic, not real enemies in this. And he has not, when he had a chance over four years, mounted his attacks against Daesh. The Daesh headquarters sat in Raqqa for years. It was never bombed by his bombs. It was children and women and hospitals and schools that were bombed by his bombs.”
“So that is the reality here. And I think for him to try to blame what happed in Paris on anybody other, particularly the West who is trying to save his country and save his people and who is the biggest single donor to the refugees that he has created in order to safeguard them, is beyond insanity. It’s insulting,“ Kerry added.
Video at link