He said earlier that Russian warplanes were focusing their strikes on the IS’ oil production and refining facilities as well as oil trucks. The coalition is still working to identify what the Russians hit as cloud-cover obscured a few of the actions, but it doesn’t appear they hit any of the targets on the coalition’s list, he said.
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Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) are suffering huge losses as a result of the Russian offensive, Shoigu said, adding that data on the ground shows that the flow of terrorists arriving in Syria has decreased, while more and more militants are fleeing the warzone to head north and south-west.
Russian Federation has intensified its air raids on what it calls “terrorist” targets in Syria and raised to 69 the number of its aircraft there.
While the three-pronged assault increases pressure on Islamic State, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has expressed skepticism over the aims of the US military operation.
US and French planes have also struck at oil targets in Deir el-Zour and elsewhere.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in December that Russia planned at least 4,000 drills for 2015.
“If we get a better understanding with Russian Federation about the process for bringing an end to the Syrian civil war, that obviously opens up more opportunities for coordination with respect to ISIL”, Obama said on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, according to The Associated Press, using another acronym for ISIS.
Russian Federation began bombing in Syria in September at the request of its longstanding ally President Bashar al-Assad, while a US-led coalition is conducting its own air campaign against IS.
Russian soldiers scrawled messages on cruise missiles destined for Syrian ISIS targets, including “For Paris”.
Paris launched air strikes against the Islamist group’s Syrian stronghold in Raqqa this week following attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13.
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The Russian army’s Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov said: “The militants have admitted the death of “Abu Nurlbagasi”, “Muhammad ibn Khayrat” and “Al-Okab” as a result of Russian airstrikes in the area of Aleppo”.
