Russian jets raided areas in northern Syria, near the Turkish border, including Syrian displacements camps and former military headquarters of the armed Syrian opposition.
Anas Kaddour, an official at the Idlib News Center, reported that the Russian warplanes carried out on Saturday eight airstrikes, with high-explosive missiles on Salwa and Qah, north of Idlib, which are about six kilometers from the Turkish border.
Speculation has been rife American forces would withdrawal from Syria after the Afghanistan pullout in an effort to end ‘forever wars’.
The United States will not be withdrawing its roughly 900 troops from northeast Syria any time soon, despite mounting speculation it would do so following its much-maligned August pull-out from Afghanistan, according to officials with knowledge of the Biden administration’s plans.
A Russian military expert said that the U.S. cannot destroy the air defense system of Russia, noting it successfully shot down U.S. cruise missiles in Syria in 2018, according to al-Watan.
The U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced yesterday that the United States will use all available means to block Iran’s drone program. At the same time, Russian military expert Alexei Leonkov said that U.S. bombers will not be able to destroy the air defense system of Russia, noting that Russian defense systems successfully shot down U.S. cruise missiles in Syria in 2018.
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 18 months ago at Mariinsky Palace on a hilly bank of the Dnipro River, he saluted the honor guard with the traditional slogan Slava Ukraini! (“Glory to Ukraine!”). The honor guard returned the customary reply in seconds: “Glory to the Heroes!” Russia’s reaction may have been even faster. During the opening speeches to the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations, the Turkish president was as clear as ever when he said, “We attach importance to the protection of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, including the Crimea, whose annexation we do not recognize.” Again, Russia’s reaction was swift and unpleasant. It would seem that Turkey’s commitment to Ukraine outweighs its concern about Russia’s reaction.
The Arab word’s a veritable mess. The cosmic leadership deficit, the absence of legitimate institutions, the lack of transparency, disrespect for human rights, abysmal regard for gender equality, and too much conspiratorial thinking make it impossible to come to terms with the magnitude of the problems. In short, this region will remain broken, angry, and dysfunctional until the leaders who purport to take responsibility for governing these unhappy lands get their proverbial acts together. And that’s … well, a generational enterprise at best, and I suspect something that will take a good deal longer. Aaron David Miller (“Where Have all the Arab States Gone” Foreign Policy: 4/14/2015)
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” –Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology
“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t pulled the knife out, much less healed the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.” –Malcolm X, in a March 1964 interview
Ukraine’s military has confirmed that it conducted its first ever strike using a Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 armed drone yesterday. The TB2 destroyed a 122mm D-30 howitzer belonging to Russian-backed separatist forces in the country’s eastern Donbass region that Ukrainian authorities said was responsible for killing one of its soldiers and wounding another. This is the latest conflict to see the use of Bayraktar’s flagship product, which has already been employed to great effect in recent years by Turkish forces in Syria, by Libyan government forces in that country, and by Azerbaijan’s military against Armenian troops in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. In each case, these unmanned aircraft were instrumental in holding back the opposing side’s forces, if not outright defeating them.
Representatives of the demonstrations and independent candidates did well in the Iraqi elections, unsettling many existing political elites.
A group of independents and representatives from the October Movement plan to form an independent parliamentary bloc to oppose powerful forces and parties in the political arena.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are sending military reinforcements to Tel Rifaat to confront any possible military operation that the Turkish army and the Turkish-backed Free Syria Army may launch.
The Syrian government forces and their affiliated militias are still deploying military reinforcements in Tel Rifaat, which is under the control of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), in the northern countryside of Aleppo. The buildup comes in anticipation of a potential military offensive waged by the Turkish army and its allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions in the area.
Turkey’s ties with Ukraine have complicated relations with Russia.
Ukraine has used a Turkish drone for the first time in its conflict with pro-Russian separatists, according to Turkish media.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted a video yesterday showing an aerial view of an unspecified target in an open area. The target then explodes, seemingly as a result of a strike from above.