US President Barack Obama warned Friday that Russia’s aggressive military campaign in Syria supporting strongman Bashar al-Assad is a “recipe for disaster”, though Washington could still work with Moscow on reducing tensions. A few of the groups targeted have been supplied with training and weapons by the United States and its allies.
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Reuters noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday “assertions that civilians had been killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria were an “information attack”.
On Saturday, the Russian defense ministry said its soldiers bombed nine ISIS positions as part of 20 airstrikes over 24 hours near the terror group’s de facto capital in Raqqa.
“We’re not going to co-operate with a Russian campaign to destroy anyone who is disgusted and fed up with Assad”.
France began an air-strike campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq previous year but refused to engage in Syria, arguing that strikes there could strengthen Assad.
Fallon said Putin’s actions complicated the situation in Syria, but the British government had made progress in persuading lawmakers from the opposition Labour party to back strikes in Syria.
– Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asks Putin for military aid.
Two Syrian regions were hit; the Idlib province in the country’s north-west and the Hama province in the centre, which had been targeted in previous Russian airstrikes.
– Putin says Moscow must act preemptively to destroy jihadists in Syria before they present a threat closer to home.
– Lavrov says Russian Federation sees “eye to eye” with the US-led coalition on hitting targets in Syria linked to IS, Al-Nusra Front and other “terrorist” groups.
On Thursday, Russian jets hit areas in the suburbs of Hama and Idlib, all areas under the control of loose coalitions of rebel groups, including the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.
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A member of the coalition’s political committee, Ahmed Ramadan, said that: “Russia is waging its aggression outside the global community, the UN Security Council and the Arab League will by responding to the illegitimate regime’s call for intervention and in contravention of the Geneva statement it had signed which calls for a political solution to the Syrian crisis”. But they also have very different friends and opposing views of how to resolve a war that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes.
