What Is Putin Up To in Syria?
Russia and the U.S. are coming into conflict, even as they claim to be fighting the same enemy.
At home the American president is beset by questions about his ties with Russia. But in Syria, U.S.-Russian ties are unraveling. On Monday, after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane for the first time in the civil war, the Russian Defense Ministry suspended a hotline for avoiding unintended conflict with the U.S. military in the crowded skies over Syria. And it didn’t stop there. The ministry announced that “all flying objects” belonging to the U.S.-led coalition in Syria “detected west of the Euphrates” river will now be “followed by Russian air-defense systems as targets.” In other words: You tread on our turf, and we just might tread on yours.
It’s an odd time for relations to be fraying, because the Russian government has spent the past few days boasting about the kinds of achievements that Donald Trump dreamed of in advocating a counterterrorism partnership with Russia. First the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had killed dozens of ISIS field commanders and perhaps hundreds of the group’s fighters in airstrikes near the Islamic State’s Syrian capital of Raqqa in late May—and that it was investigating whether Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was among the dead. Then the Russian military reported that it had killed two additional ISIS field commanders and nearly 200 fighters earlier this month in airstrikes in the Deir Ezzor region of eastern Syria.
Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/russia-isis-baghdadi-syria/530649/
It's a quandary, Assad is part of an ethnic minority, Alawite. Per Western Democratic values, he would not be elected in a free election in my opinion.
The Rebels are against him. I guess ISIS is against him; but there is a lot of a grey area and the regime and the Russians probably fight the rebels much more than Assad. The rebels fight ISIS, probably more than Assad does.
I think this latest matter is over Russia, Iran and Syria perceiving that the US-backed forces are making headway against ISIS; and that the country could be broken up.
