The dominant group in the “Army of Conquest” that has taken over northwestern Syria is the Nusra Front, a clone of Islamic State that broke away from it in 2013 as part of a turf battle. Delegates from the Gulf states also visited the Kremlin. After Putin announced plans last month for anti-ISIS strikes, a spokesman for the Church declared it a “holy fight”. Why did they happen in those Arab countries that are friends with Russian Federation?
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Both the anti-Assad rebels and the government are quick to accuse each other of collaborating with the Islamic State. Aleppo is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the border with Turkey. It was the most significant in months, managing to quickly seize the villages of Tal Qrah, Tal Sousin and Kfar Qares.
They also stormed a former army base known as the Infantry Academy that had been held by anti-Assad forces for two years.
Despite Islamic State’s “considerable losses and mass walkout”, it’s too early to talk about “complete victory” over the terrorists in Syria, Kartapolov stressed, adding the militants are continuing their stand against Syrian government troops in a number of regions.
All elements fighting Assad are terrorists.
Many Russians feel that the greatest disaster of the 20th century was not the Great Patriotic War, which killed about 27 million Russians by 1945, but the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a point Putin made in 2005 when he lamented this “major geopolitical disaster of the century”.
If not Assad, then who? .
That was the gist of the reaction from Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo, who leads the Syria’s Greek Melkite Catholic community, on October 9. In mid 2012, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iranian frontline against Israel, has joined the combat against the rebels in Syria. “So if the military departments of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member-states and other countries wish to accuse us of anything, they have everything they need to present concrete evidence, just like the Russian Defense Ministry does”, he said.
Pursuing this line of thought even further-and here’s where USA and Russian interests begin to diverge again-it is in Russia’s interest to have someone else, such as the United States, bear more of the unsafe terrorism-provoking burden of pushing back ISIS.
Russian Federation has been disputing the allegations as well as media reports, having questioned the credentials of the source that the information is based on. They know that Putin’s client in Syria, Assad, is no choir boy.
“We also want to insist that the world enlist the Assad regime as a terrorist organization”, he said.
In May the ease with which IS was able to seize the ancient city of Palmyra prompted a few military observers to speculate Assad deliberately abandoned the site – with its unique ruins and irreplaceable ancient artifacts and treasures – to gain Western sympathy.
The meeting sought to close the gap between the United States and its allies, who support the rebels, and the key foreign allies of the Syrian government, Russian Federation and Iran.
“On the ground they are fighting in the same position against civilians”, he contended.
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Most of the ground offensives have targeted northwestern and western Syria, in Hama, Idlib and Latakia provinces, areas where rebel gains this year posed a growing threat to Assad. That is territory once earmarked by the West for a possible safe haven for Syrian refugees.
