Conquer Club

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from Syria. He announced the move during his first visit to the country, as he arrived with no advance notice at Khmeimim Airbase in Syria’s Latakia province on Monday morning.
A “significant part” of the Russian military contingent in Syria should return to Russia, Putin announced, addressing Russian military personnel at Khmeimim. The order to withdraw followed the defeat of “the most battle-hardened grouping of international terrorists” by the Russian and Syrian militaries in the space of two years.
As he arrived at the base, which houses Russian forces assisting Syria in the battle against Islamic State terrorists (IS, formerly ISIS), Putin was greeted by his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, and by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, in a brief stop on the Russian leader's way to bilateral talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, followed by a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.
The commander of the Russian forces in Syria, Colonel-General Sergey Surovikin, informed Putin that about 70,000 sq km of Syrian territory had been liberated and 32,000 terrorists killed in the last seven months of the operation. Russian special forces, military police, sapper teams and 25 aircraft will now leave Syria, and the field hospital will be removed.
Putin also warned that should terrorists attempt to “rear their heads” in Syria again, Russia will strike them as “they have never seen before.” Russia will continue to use Khmeimim Airbase and the Syrian port of Tartus, which provides technical support for the Russian Navy, while the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria will also remain.

betiko wrote:There s a few OT posters that can help russia with that if they are offered some one way tickets to syria

2dimes wrote:Oh lucky day. There are still targets. They are not passive though.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/03/middleea ... index.html

notyou2 wrote:Goran, when will Putin fly to Odessa and announce the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian soil?

notyou2 wrote:When will Russia stop spreading it's oligarchy around the world? Most people stopped being serfs many years ago, but it seems it has returned to plague any country Russia interferes with, oh, except Afghanistan.

the economist wrote:IN DECEMBER last year Vladimir Putin used a surprise visit to Syria to declare that Russia’s mission there was “basically accomplished”. His troops had saved the regime of Bashar al-Assad. And Russia had played the decisive part in a conflict that America had failed to control. Coming after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, his message was clear. Russia is back.

Just ten weeks later, Mr Putin’s boast looks premature. Within a few hours last weekend Iran first sent a large surveillance drone from deep inside Syria into Israeli airspace and Israel responded by shooting it down and destroying its controlling infrastructure near Palmyra. When an Israeli F-16 fighter jet, on its way home from the raid, was brought down by a salvo of Syrian air-defence missiles, Israel hit back by destroying around a third of Syria’s anti-aircraft batteries. Russian military advisers may have been among those killed.

The skirmishes hold two messages. Far from winding down, the war in Syria is entering a new and possibly more dangerous phase. And while fighting rages, Russia must stay.

(...)

Although Mr Putin poses as the arbiter of Syria’s fate and the convener of the peace process, he has little control over other actors, with their own competing agendas. Russian-sponsored peace talks last month in Sochi were a flop. Barely any opposition representatives showed up and the delegation from Damascus rejected calls from the UN and Russia itself for a new constitution. Tension between the other co-sponsors of the conference, Iran and Turkey, reached breaking point when Iranian-backed militias shelled a Turkish convoy in Syria with Russia’s reluctant consent. Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, both of whom Russia has wooed, are now at each other’s throats. Mr Putin attempted to dissuade his Turkish opposite number, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from charging in, but was ignored.

Meanwhile, casualty-averse Russian voters are wearying of the war. A recent poll suggested that less than a third support continuing military operations. Their mood will not have been helped by reports that scores of Russian contract soldiers may have been killed fighting American-led anti-Islamic State forces in eastern Syria last week. The Kremlin would dearly love to find an exit. But that looks a remote prospect.

Russia achieved a lot in Syria with a small commitment of forces, but it now finds that it is too weak to bang heads together. It may be too soon to talk of Russia getting stuck in a Syrian quagmire, as Barack Obama once glibly predicted, but Mr Putin looks a long way from being able to extricate himself.

If Russia’s Syria gambit unravels, America should take little comfort. The myopic policy shared by both Mr Obama and President Donald Trump of seeing Syria almost solely in terms of defeating Islamic State has left America without influence there against Iran and torn between Turkey, its prickly NATO ally, and its most effective ground forces, the Syrian Kurds.

Russia is finding the going more difficult than it thought. America has made itself, at best, peripheral. Meanwhile, the suffering of ordinary Syrians drags remorselessly on.