Putin’s airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria are backed by 72 per cent of Russians, the Interfax news service reported on 8 October, citing a poll by the Levada Center in Moscow.
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Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that air and ground offensives would be “synchronised”.
The USA was still waiting Wednesday for a formal response from Russian Federation on a draft document laying out proposed technical safety procedures for the aircraft flights, the defense official said.
Russian Federation has mostly been using unguided bombs dropped from medium heights although Moscow calls these precision strikes.
Russian forces carried out the air strikes on Wednesday morning, in addition to targeting anti-government armed groups with surface-to-surface missiles, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
If it is proven that the airstrikes hit hospitals, Russian Federation could face war crime charges. Russia’s defence ministry said they had struck 11 Isil positions, while an official video appeared to show they had hit rebel-held territory in Aleppo and Idlib.
Defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday his forces have hit “19 command points, 12 ammunition stores, 71 units of military hardware, factories and workshops producing explosives and IEDs”.
– What does the West say it has done?
Damascus has confirmed that the Russian air raids came upon the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to SANA.
The Islamic State group is not present in the areas where the fighting is underway.
The defense official said that so far there have been no incidents or conflicts with the Russians, even though they are sharing the same battlespace in the skies over Syria.
Russia’s intervention has strained ties with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, particularly Turkey, which shares a long border with Syria and has been a leading backer of the Syrian rebels.
Syrian rebels and their backers accuse Russian Federation of targeting moderate and Islamist anti-government fighters, not only IS fighters.
“So all of that is very much true, but there is another aspect to this that really deserves attention, specifically the way in which Russian Federation is using this mission in Syria to demonstrate to the United States and to the world exactly what Russia’s capacity and capability is, both militarily and politically”, he pointed out.
Iraq is a coalition member. Such strikes, from roughly 1,000 miles away, require flying missiles over Iranian and Iraqi airspace, which experts say is meant to prove a point to the West.
The direction from which the attack occurred also was something of a surprise.
Turkey, also a neighbor of Syria, has complained of repeated violations of its airspace.
– What does Assad say about Russian strikes?
“We’re confident that we can maintain a distance”, said Kenney.
On Wednesday, it launched a naval bombardment of ISIS targets in Syria, a senior Russian official said, ramping up its newly muscular presence in the Middle East.
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Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told state TV that the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group for dozens of local battalions, is no different from other militant groups.
