Even worse, the demise of Assad would deprive Russia of its closest ally in the Middle East. And if that were not bad enough, a rebel victory in Syria that includes Islamist and jihadist forces could mean that at least a few of the estimated 3,000 Chechen and Russian foreign fighters in Syria decide to return home emboldened like their Afghan predecessors by the defeat of a major power.
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In response to fears about Russian involvement in Syria, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was “not striving for any kind of leadership over Syria”.
The defence ministry in Moscow said Russia’s air force had hit 86 “terrorist” targets in Syria in the past 24 hours, in the highest one-day tally since it launched its bombing campaign on September 30.
A US-led coalition has for the past year carried out air strikes on IS, which controls swathes of both Syria and neighboring Iraq.
With help from Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian soldiers, Syria is trying to drive insurgents from western areas that are crucial to President Bashar al-Assad’s survival, and has recaptured a number of towns in the provinces of Hama and Latakia.
“By bombing us, Russian Federation is bombing the 13 “Friends of Syria” countries”, he said, referring to the group of the United States and its allies that called for the ouster of Assad after his crackdown on political protests in 2011.
He has proposed creating contact groups in addition to four working groups composed of Syrian opposition and government representatives. Instead of training and equipping moderate rebel fighters outside of Syria, White House officials announced Friday the program would ramp up materiel support to trusted units fighting on Syrian battlefields, while training only rebel leaders in Turkey.
“We get what we ask for in a very short time”, one commander, Ahmad al-Saud, said in an interview.
“The recent Russian military attacks… are of deep concern and must cease immediately”, European Union ministers said on Monday.
A successful American regime change operation in Syria would cut across definite interests of the Russian state and the ruling class of criminal oligarchs that it represents.
“We still don’t 100 percent share the same view on the situation up to every step with our partners in the region, with the Americans, with our other colleagues, but we absolutely have progress”, Lavrov said. Other air strikes hit near Mosul, Baiji, Sinjar and Tal Afar, it said in a statement.
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Such claims have been made in the past and never verified, and the reports were met with mockery by pro-IS social media accounts.
