NATO’s secretary general Tuesday refuted Moscow’s claim that its recent incursion into Turkish airspace was accidental, saying there were two “very serious” and separate incidents over the weekend. “An attack on Turkey means an attack on North Atlantic Treaty Organisation”, he warned.
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“What we have received from Russian Federation this morning is that this was a mistake and that they respect Turkey’s borders and this will not happen again”, Davutoglu said of Saturday’s airspace violation, making clear Turkey would respond if provoked.
“These groups are fluid and they mutate all the time”, she said in Moscow.
Syrian troops backed by Russian airstrikes battled insurgents in central Syria on Wednesday in the first major ground fighting since Moscow began launching air raids on militants last week, activists said. The two countries have conflicting positions on Syria – with Russian Federation backing President Bashar Assad and Turkey insisting on his ouster – but have set differences aside in the past so as not to harm economic ties.
Back home, Putin’s Syria mandate has only limited support with over 69% of Russian opposing a direct military intervention in Syria.
But Mr Stoltenberg said: “I can confirm that we have seen a substantial build-up of Russian forces in Syria: air forces, air defences, but also ground troops in connection with the air base they have, and we also see an increased naval presence”.
Security think tank Quilliam, in a study, said most ISIS propaganda now aims to prove it is a genuine nation, rather than glorify acts of violence. “We need to address the realities on the ground in our countries”, she said.
Bogdanovsky’s visit is expected to take care of that: The Russian general discussed with his Israeli counterpart, Gen. Yair Golan, the establishment of a joint mechanism to “deconflict” military actions by the Israel Defense Forces and Russian units.
“Russia must deconflict its military activities in Syria, ” he said and added that an initial assessment of the incidents indicated “that it doesn’t look like an accident”.
Russian officials are accusing Islamic State fighters of hiding among the civilian population, and they say Russian warplanes have canceled attacks whenever there was a possibility of hurting non-combatants.
Seems to me that Occam’s Razor suggests an alternate explanation: USA intelligence realized months ago that Iran was plotting to bring Russian Federation into Syria on Assad’s side but Obama didn’t dare make a peep lest it jeopardize the nuclear deal that’s supposedly going to secure his foreign-policy legacy.
The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdurrahman, said the troops moved from the village of Jorin into other parts of rural Latakia and Sahl al-Ghab, a vital plain that lies between Latakia, Hama and Idlib provinces.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the Russian warplanes’ equipment allows striking the IS throughout Syria with “absolute precision”.
Turkey says it has proposed a meeting between Turkish and Russian military officials to be held in Ankara on avoiding future Russian infringements of Turkey’s airspace.
After a summer of significant setbacks at the hands of both anti-government groups and the Islamic State, the Syrian government is widely expected to use Russia’s new support to push out from the government-controlled areas in the western third of the country.
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New strikes targeted the group’s main weapons depots in western Aleppo province and completely destroyed them late on Tuesday, its commander Hassan Haj Ali told Reuters on Wednesday via an Internet messaging service.
