And the president suggested, “A military solution alone”, in which “Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and pacify the population”, will just “get them stuck in a quagmire, and it won’t work”.
Advertisement
Orlov said the targets were installations for Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, “two terrorist organizations recognized as such”. “And that’s a recipe for disaster, and it’s one that I reject”.
Moscow says it is targeting the Islamic State jihadist group, but Washington and its allies suspect its military intervention is aimed at keeping in power President Bashar al-Assad under the guise of fighting “terrorism”.
He said the airstrikes carried out so far by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria and Iraq have been “insufficiently efficient”.
Mr Pushkov predicted that the Russian campaign would intensify but was unlikely to last more than three or four months.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande met in Paris after a week of frenzied global activity around Syria that finally broke into yesterday’s meeting, which was supposed to have been only about Ukraine.
In this photo made from the footage taken from Russian Defense Ministry official web site on Thursday, October 1, 2015 a bomb explosion is seen in Syria. Targets have included ISIL’s main stronghold in Raqqa, but also the provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Idlib where few ISIL fighters operate.
“We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL”, the coalition said.
Earlier, the group had reported that warplanes, believed to be Russian, had also targeted Qaryatain overnight – a town which lies about 80 miles northeast of Damascus.
Despite Russia’s actions, Fallon insisted the British government would make the case to extend the RAF’s strikes, saying it would be “morally wrong” not to target ISIS in Syria. The Moscow Times noted that most of the Russian strikes targeted other groups opposed to Assad.
Advertisement
“The problem here is Assad and the brutality that he’s inflicted on the Syrian people, and it has to stop”, Obama said at a White House press conference.
