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At the peak of the optimism about the Russian-Turkish rapprochement in the summer rumours circulated of Turkey expelling the US from Incirlik air base in Turkey.
Incirlik is the single most important US and NATO air base in the east Mediterranean region.  Built by US engineers in the 1950s with a 3,000 metre concrete runway,  there are 5,000 US personnel permanently stationed there, in a base equipped with 57 hardened aircraft shelters and which stores US tactical nuclear missiles.

Anyone seeking the true cause of the disaffection of Western electorates with the Western political elite need look no further than the case of the IMF’s Director, Christine Lagarde.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has released more film of its aircraft the Admiral Kuznetsov engaging in combat operations in the eastern Mediterranean.
The film shows SU33 and MiG29 fighters taking off and landing on the deck of the Admiral Kuznetsov before and after carrying out air patrols over Syria.
The Russian Defence Ministry claims that the SU33s and MiG29s have carried out air strikes in Syria using 500 kg bombs.  However all the aircraft shown in the film actually carry air to air missiles, which appears to confirm that their primary role is air defence.

That the liberation of Palmyra may not be long delayed is strongly suggested by what appear to be reliable reports – confirmed both by the Al-Masdar news agency and by the Iranian news agency Fars – of a mass withdrawal of ISIS fighters from areas west of Palmyra.

Whilst Turkish officials are busy spreading stories about Russian proposals to carve up Syria and ditch President Assad that have no basis, the Turkish media has been full of stories of Russian warplanes bombing ISIS to help the Turkish army near Al-Bab.

As was bound to happen, Al-Qaeda in Syria is pulling out the stops to try to disrupt the Russian-Turkish sponsored ceasefire.

On 28th December 2016, the day before the Russian and Turkish Foreign Ministries communicated their ceasefire plan to the UN Secretary General and to the UN Security Council, a report appeared in Reuters which claimed that Russia and Turkey have come to a private understanding to divide Syria into “zones of influence”.
Supposedly this also involves the ultimate removal from power of Syrian President Assad, though supposedly Iran has not agreed to this.

The murderous attack on New Year’s Day on a nightclub in Istanbul is merely the latest in a string of terrorist attacks in Turkey.
Responsibility for the New Year’s Day attack has been claimed by ISIS.  ISIS has also claimed responsibility for previous terrorist attacks in Ankara in October 2015 (which killed 100 people) in January and March 2016 in Istanbul, on Ataturk airport in Istanbul in June 2016 (which killed 45 people) and in August 2016 in Gaziantep (which killed 54 people).

In a Western media world where the words “Russia” and “fake news” are rapidly becoming conflated, it is interesting to note that two stories about Russia which gained unusual prominence in the Western media over the last few days were both false, and that Russia far from being responsible for either was the target of both.
The first of these stories concerned the Anglo-American school in Moscow.

As my colleague Adam Garrie has previously reported, on 31st December 2016 the United Nations Security Council unanimously supported Resolution 2336, a Russian drafted Resolution enshrining the Russian-Turkish ceasefire plan for Syria.