Until now, Russia’s operation in Syria has mostly targeted more moderate rebel groups in Syria to shore up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who Putin has backed from the start of the four-and-a-half-year long war, until the revelation about the Russian airliner.
Advertisement
Kartapolov said that Russian strategic bombers carried out a third massive strike on terrorist targets in Syria.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Italian state TV that he doesn’t support a political transition in Syria while “terrorists” still control parts of Syria.
Alexander Odoevskiy, a spokesman for the embassy, said it was “a little bit misfocused” to concentrate on Assad and said it would be wrong to drive him out of power as he was “part of the process”.
Russian Federation has given the United States advance notice before it conducts air strikes in Syria at least three times since last week’s attacks in Paris, a USA official said on Friday.
He says it’s unimaginable that Syria’s civil war can be stopped without Assad leaving power.
Russian Federation and Iran, Obama said, will have to make a “fundamental shift” in their policy on Syria if they hope to take on ISIS successfully. “If you get rid of them, everything collapses”.
With the recent bloodbath in Paris, European Union has decried Russian support to Assad and French President Francois Hollande has launched airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria.
The comments are the latest indication that last week’s Islamic State attacks in the French capital and the downing of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt are pushing Russia, France and the United States toward joint action in Syria.
With the larger problem of intense immigration from the war torn nations into Europe, the western countries seem to have finally awakened to the threat of the Islamic State. Instead, he deployed even-mannered restraint when asked to assess the efficiency of the U.S.-led coalition’s air war against IS, which has thus far fallen woefully short of Obama’s goal of defeating the extremist group. John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency director, said Monday that “we’ve been exchanging information” with the Russians about the flow of foreign fighters from their territory, an example of collaboration that he said should be “enhanced”.
A Syrian opposition figure familiar with the Russian position said Moscow’s military campaign aims to facilitate a diplomatic track by strengthening Assad’s position and weakening the rebels enough that they all agree to come to the table. “Russia may view France’s accelerating air campaign in Syria as an opportunity both to draw a major US ally into its proposed alternative counterterrorism coalition and to degrade North Atlantic Treaty Organisation”.
“I am certain that we must pass a UN Security Council resolution, which would state the need to act in accordance with Chapter 7 of the UN Charter and destroy ISIS”.
Advertisement
-Bloomberg’s Henry Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov and Josh Wingrove contributed.
