The Russian Defence Ministry has confirmed that Russian TU95MS strategic bombers have launched advanced Kh-101 cruise missiles on ISIS positions near ISIS’s Syrian “capital” of Raqqa.
After weeks of delay caused by intense political and bureaucratic resistance in Washington, and with the Trump administration still not fully formed, the first high level meetings took place today between officials of the Russian government and the new Trump administration.
The Russian General Staff has commented on the progress army as it continues offensive in central Syria against ISIS.
Starting in December ISIS launched a major offensive in central and eastern Syria. This captured Palmyra and a belt of gas fields west of Palmyra, and also involved a major attack on the besieged eastern desert city of Deir Ezzor.
Days after confirmation was received that the ISIS fighters in Al-Bab have been surrounded by the Syrian army from the south and the Turkish army and its Jihadi allies (the so-called “Free Syrian army”) from the north, news reports confirm that pressure on the ISIS fighters in the town is growing.
On Monday, February 8, the human rights organization Amnesty International published a 48-page report accusing the Syrian government of mass executions and tortures in Saydnaya prison. According to the watchdog, between September 2011 and December 2015, an estimated 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed.
Reports are circulating – some of which are traceable to Jihadi sources – that fast advancing Syrian army forces have completed the encirclement of 5,000 ISIS fighters who are trapped in the strategic north Syrian town of Al-Bab.
If true then this begs the major question of whether the Syrian troops who have been advancing on Al-Bab from the south are coordinating with the Turkish troops who together with Turkey’s Jihadi allies have been trying to take Al-Bab from the north.
In a lengthy discussion for The Duran I recently wrote that the concerns some have expressed about the ‘draft constitution’ the Russians presented to the Syrian parties at the peace talks in Astana, though well-intentioned, are misplaced.
Following intense Russian bombing reports are trickling in that the Syrian army is on the verge of breaking ISIS’s siege of Deir Ezzor airport, and has recaptured several critical gas fields west of Palmyra.
Since shortly after the Syrian peace talks began in the Kazakh capital Astana rumours have circulated that Russia proposed at the conference a ‘draft constitution’ for Syria.
Rumours about the contents of this ‘draft constitution’ have spread widely, with concern widely expressed that Russia might be seeking to impose its ideas on the Syrian people in quasi-colonial fashion, and that Russia is overreaching itself.
