Tag Archives: Putin

Russia Promises Revenge on Bombing of Plane

The explosion of a Russian jetliner that took off from Sinai was the result of a terrorist attack according to Russia’s chief intelligence officer, Alexander Bortnikov.  The mid-air explosion of  the Russian jetliner over the Sinai desert last month  killed all 224 people on board .“Traces of foreign explosives” were found on debris from the Airbus plane, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin vowed to step up his country’s military campaign against Islamist militants in Syria

According to Reuters, Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.

During a Kremlin meeting broadcasted on Tuesday, Putin addressed the Russian people.  

“The murder of our people in Sinai is among the bloodiest crimes in terms of victims. We will not wipe away the tears from our soul and hearts. This will stay with us forever but will not stop us finding and punishing the criminals.”

Putin then promised, “We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

The FSB security service announced a bounty of $50 million to find those responsible and said that award would be paid out for information that helps detain persons who blew up the Russian plane in Egypt.

According to several news reports, Egyptian authorities have detained two employees of Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the downed plane originated, for questioning, two security officials and an airport employee said on Tuesday.

Most of the A321 passengers on the doomed plane were Russian tourists flying home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

World Leaders to Meet this Weekend to Discuss an Ending for Syrian Crisis

In the most serious effort yet, world leaders are meeting this weekend in Vienna to end the nearly 5-year-old Syrian civil war as well as discuss a Russian proposal that calls for early elections.

And while top diplomats from almost 20 countries agree that it is time to end the bloodshed in Syria, there is no clear plan for how to make that dream a reality, according to the Associated Press.

However, the Washington Post reports that there is at least a determination to end the crisis as a senior administration official stated that the world leaders plan on having rapid-fire meetings until a plan is developed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also be attending the meeting. There are high hopes that the peace draft the Kremlin reportedly created will at least be a start to planning the end of the civil war, especially now that Russia and the U.S. are starting to see eye-to-eye on restructuring the political system in Syria, according to the Associated Press.

Some of the other countries at the meeting include Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Iran is a key ally to Russia and the Syrian regime while Saudi Arabia and the U.S. has backed Syrian opposition forces. Syria will not be included in the meeting.

Initial peace talks began in an official meeting between world leaders on October 30.

Putin uses Assad visit to talk up Kremlin role as Syrian broker

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to thank Russia’s Vladimir Putin personally for his military support, in a surprise visit that underlined how Russia has become a major player in the Middle East.

It was Assad’s first foreign visit since the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, and came three weeks after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria that has also bolstered Assad’s forces.

The Kremlin, which said it had invited Assad to visit Moscow, kept the visit quiet until Wednesday morning, broadcasting a meeting between the two men in the Kremlin and releasing a transcript of an exchange they had.

Putin said he hoped progress on the military front would be followed by moves towards a political solution in Syria, bolstering Western hopes Moscow will use its increased influence on Damascus to cajole Assad into talking to his opponents.

Assad’s confidence is likely to be boosted by the visit, which comes as his forces wage counteroffensives in western Syria against insurgents backed by Assad’s foreign opponent, as well as Islamic State militants.

“First of all I wanted to express my huge gratitude to the whole leadership of the Russian Federation for the help they are giving Syria,” Assad told Putin.

“If it was not for your actions and your decisions the terrorism which is spreading in the region would have swallowed up a much greater area and spread over an even greater territory.”

Russian officials have repeatedly said they have no special loyalty for the Syrian leader, but his audience with Putin will be seen in the West as yet another sign the Kremlin wants Assad to be part of any political solution, at least initially.

The visit also suggests that Russia, and not longtime ally Iran, has now emerged as Assad’s most important foreign friend.

Russian state TV made the meeting its top news item, showing Assad, dressed in a dark blue suit, talking to Putin, together with the Russian foreign and defense ministers.

The Kommersant daily cited unnamed sources saying meetings between the two delegations had lasted over three hours. The Syrian presidency Twitter account said Assad and Putin held three rounds of talks – one of them a closed meeting and the other two including Russia’s foreign and defense ministers.

The Kremlin has cast its intervention in Syria, its biggest in the Middle East since the 1991 Soviet collapse, as a common sense move designed to roll back international terrorism in the face of what it says is ineffective action from Washington.

It is likely to use Assad’s visit to buttress its domestic narrative that its air campaign is just and effective and to underline its assertion that its actions show it has shaken off the Ukraine crisis to become a serious global player.

Russia has a combined force of around 50 jets and helicopters in Latakia protected by Russian marines. It also has military trainers and advisers working with the Syrian army.

Russia’s air force says it has flown over 700 sorties against more than 690 targets in Syria since Sept. 30.

Assad, who looked relaxed, emphasized how Russia was acting according to international law, praising Moscow’s political approach to the Syrian crisis which he said had ensured it had not played out according to “a more tragic scenario.”

Ultimately, he said, the resolution to the crisis was a political one.

“Terrorism is a real obstacle to a political solution,” said Assad. “And of course the whole (Syrian) people want to take part in deciding the fate of their state, and not just the leadership.”

POLITICAL SOLUTION?

Putin said Russia was ready to help find a political solution and hailed the Syrian people for standing up to the militants “almost on their own”, saying the Syrian army had notched up serious battlefield success in recent times.

Sergei Shoigu, his defense minister, said Russia’s air support had helped the Syrian army move from defense to attack, saying Moscow would continue to provide military support.

Putin said Russia had felt compelled to act in Syria because of the threat Islamist militants fighting Assad’s forces there posed to its own security.

“Unfortunately on Syrian territory there are about 4,000 people from the former Soviet Union – at a minimum – fighting government forces with weapons in their hands,” said Putin.

“We, it goes without saying, can not allow them to turn up on Russian territory after they have received battlefield experience and undergone ideological instruction.”

Positive developments on the military front in Syria would provide a basis for a long-term political solution, involving all political forces, ethnic and religious groups, said Putin.

“We are ready to make our contribution not only in the course of military actions in the fight against terrorism, but during the political process,” he said, according to the transcript released by the Kremlin.

“This will, of course, be in close contact with other world powers and with countries of the region which are interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict,” Putin said.

Interfax news agency said Putin briefed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan by phone about the talks. Turkey, which supports rebels trying to overthrow Assad, said the Syrian leader should have stayed in Moscow for the sake of his country.

When asked whether Assad’s own political future had been discussed, Putin’s spokesman declined to comment.

How Assad got to and back from Moscow remains a mystery.

Syria’s ambassador to Russia, Riad Haddad, told Reuters Assad had traveled in a Syrian plane and had safely returned home after the meeting. But publicly available flight tracking data suggested Assad’s hosts may have laid on transport for him.

It showed an IL-76MD Russian military cargo plane flew from Syria to Moscow’s Chkalovsky military airfield on Tuesday, and that an IL-62M plane from Russia’s presidential fleet flew to Latakia, a government controlled Syrian province, that same evening.

(By Andrew Osborn; Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova, Ekaterina Golubkova and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Christian Lowe and Dominic Evans)

Putin Claims that Russia is Still Fighting ISIS and the U.S. is Getting in the Way

As tensions rise between the U.S. and Russia over the situation in Syria, both sides claim that their main priority is to eradicate ISIS.

U.S. officials continue to accuse Russian President Putin’s new bombing campaign in Syria is to boost the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Multiple maps have shown Russia’s targets in Syria, and the majority of targets have been key locations of U.S.-backed Syrian rebels, not ISIS. And again, Putin has brushed off these accusations.

“What we are trying to achieve is to contribute to the fight against terrorism, which is a threat to both the United States to Russia to European countries and the whole world,” Putin said at an investment conference.

Boths sides disagree on how the civil war in Syria can be resolved and how ISIS can be defeated. Russia believes al-Assad needs to remain in power while the U.S. says the Syrian president needs to step down.

Putin claimed that his administration warned the United States out of “respect” before they began using airstrikes in Syria. They also sought cooperation on targets. Washington has been reluctant to work with Russia as they fear Russia would use their coordinates to target the rebels that the U.S. does not want targeted. The Syrian rebels are also already suspicious that the U.S. is already working with Russia on attacks, and U.S. officials do not want to feed those suspicions.

The Russian president also ridiculed the U.S. over their attempt to arm the Syrian rebels with air dropped munitions. He believes that the supplies will end up in the hands of ISIS.

“The United States has recognized that it was a failure and right now they keep distributing ammunition, hardware, equipment,” Putin said. “Who will get a hold of those? And it is not a rhetorical question.”

While U.S. officials state the main priority in Syria is to defeat ISIS rather than counter Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war, they will be holding a third meeting with officials from the Russian Ministry of Defense via video conference on Wednesday. They hope to establish safety protocols for aircrews flying over Syria.

Putin Confirms Protecting Assad Regime

It seems now that President Vladimir Putin has confirmed what many have continued to suspect. On state run Russia 24 TV Putin acknowledged that the Russian airstrikes in Syria are meant to bolster President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“Our task is to stabilize the legitimate government and to create conditions for a political compromise … by military means, of course, The units of international terrorists and their ilk have no desire to negotiate with the Syrian government, who is almost sieged in its own capital.”
Russia has said it’s coordinating with the Syrian regime to target ISIS and other terrorists. Al-Assad has used the term “terrorists” to describe Syrians who seek his ouster.

Until now, Putin and the Russian military have stated numerous times that their main objective in Syria was to fight the Islamic State.

CNN military analyst Lt. Col. Rick Francona said he had no doubt Russia was targeting Syrian rebels rather than ISIS.

“I think it’s very apparent from the target sets that we’re watching. Even the maps that are released from the Russians themselves show where they’re concentrating their airstrikes,” Francona said.

“And if you look at the map where they are hitting, most of them are concentrated in that area between Hama and Aleppo — and that’s where the Syrian rebels have had success over the past two months.”

The bombings are numerous. The Russian Defense Ministry said it has struck 53 alleged Islamic State targets in the past 24 hours, destroying command centers, ammunition and fuel depots as well as training camps.

In the meantime, according to a government official, U.S. forces carried out an airdrop of small arms ammunition on Sunday to Syrian Arabs in northern Syria, a U.S. military official said on Monday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the airdrop of supplies to the opposition fighters was part of a revamped U.S. strategy announced last week to help rebels in Syria battling Islamic State militants.

Russia Denies Missiles Landed in Iran, Despite Pentagon Reports

Pentagon officials reported Friday that the 4 of the 26 missiles fired by Russian warships in the Caspian Sea landed in a rural area of northern Iran.

Both Iran and Russia deny the claims, saying that it’s propaganda. Russia states that all 26 missiles hit ISIS targets in north and northwest Syria. The Russian defense ministry posted this on Facebook: “No matter how unpleasant and unexpected it is for our colleagues in the Pentagon and Langley, our strike yesterday with precision-guided weapons at Isis infrastructure in Syria hit its targets.”

Reports on Iranian TV indicated that an “unidentified flying object” had crashed and exploded in a village, killing a number of cows. At this time it’s still unclear if that object was a Russian missile, but social media posts showed missiles flying overhead at low altitudes.

A U.S. defense official said that the missiles used by Russia to attack Syrian targets are typically used to attack heavy air defenses, which the Syrian rebel groups do not have. They speculate that the use of the cruise missile is a sign of Russia’s power to the rest of the world.

The Pentagon report comes days after Russian forces coordinated attacks with the Syrian military to attack Syrian rebel groups. Russia continues to claim that their presence in Syria is to fight ISIS, despite their continuous attacks on groups that are against the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regime.

Russians Release First Airstrike in Syria

After Russian Parliament gave the all go to using air power to combat in Syria, a Russian General told the U.S. to stay out of Syrian airspace.

“A Russian official in Baghdad this morning informed U.S. Embassy personnel that Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria,” said spokesman John Kirby. “He further requested that U.S. aircraft avoid Syrian airspace during these missions.”

Putin said the action was preemptive, warning that Moscow would be hunting down Islamic State militants before they target Russia.

Russian defense officials say that they were targeting the Islamic State group saying it has hit IS weapons, depots, ammunition, communications infrastructure, and fuel.  

The head of the Western-backed Syrian political opposition said the Russian strikes had killed at least 36 civilians and targeted areas where Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked fighters were not present.  Official reports of casualties have been mixed.  

An unnamed U.S. official told Reuters that so far they did not appear to be targeting ISIS held territory but only hitting areas where Free Syrian Army and other anti-Assad groups are located.  

Russian Forces in Syria to Boost Bashar al-Assad’s Regime

The European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief reported to Al Jazeera that Russia is increasing its military force in Syria to prevent the “imminent” fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The report comes after the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policies, Federica Mogherini, had a conversation with Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov told Mogherini that the military support Russia has provided Syria was to prevent the collapse of the Syrian state.

“His fear is of a complete collapse of the state structures in Syria,” Mogherini said. “This could be one of the reasons Russia is talking in this way, but it could also be willingness to show that Russia is an important, substantial player.”

Most analysts believe that Russia’s increase in military power will end any prospect of Assad being overthrown by rebel forces as well as consolidate the de facto partitioning of Syria. In the recent past, Assad’s military has nearly fallen to rebel advances.

Approximately two thirds of Syria is controlled by mostly Islamist rebels, including Syrian fighters backed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, or the Islamic State, and it doesn’t seem like Russia will be able to retake the territory unless it deploys ground troops.

Russia has stated many times that its military presence in Syria is to fight the Islamic State, but many world leaders, including the United States, are still uncertain. Former U.S. ambassador, Robert Ford, believes Russia’s main goal is to boost Assad.

“Why would you put the air units in Latakia instead of Damascus if you want to fight the Islamic State?” Ford said. “Why do you send anti-aircraft equipment when the Islamic State doesn’t have any air force?

“So it seems to me that this is designed to help Assad first,” Ford added.

U.N Summit, World Leaders Meet to Discuss Global Problems

Today five of the most powerful men in the world will be speaking at this historic meeting at the U.N. United States President Obama, Russia’s President Putin, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki Moon called for a political solution to the war in Syria that has left more than 200,000 dead and unleashed a torrent of refugees. “The global humanitarian system is not broken; it is broke,” he said. He also urged world leaders to work together in order to banish the “blatant brutality” of extremist groups, such as the Islamic State.

U.S. President Barack Obama said they would work with any country to solve the crisis and war in Syria but that we must also not allow Syrian President Bashar Assad to stay in office. When speaking about the conflict in Ukraine, he said the world cannot stand by while Russia violates Ukraine’s integrity and sovereignty.

The need to protect and nurture the environment was first thing on Chinese President, Xi Jinping’s agenda in his speech today. “We should care for nature and not place ourselves above it. We should reconcile industrial development with nature.” He added that China would never pursue “hegemony, expansion or sphere of influence” in the world. And he pledged $1 billion over the next decade to support U.N. efforts to further global peace and development.

Russian President Putin stressed the importance of combating the ISIS threat in Syria stating that it must be done in cooperation with the Syrian government. “We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to work with the Syrian government and its armed forces,” Putin said. “No one but the Syrian forces and Kurdish militia are seriously fighting against the Islamic state.” The alternative is to arm terrorists who threaten Europe, Russia and other countries, he said.

The Iranian President Hassan Rouhani praised the Iranian/U.S. agreement on nuclear weapons as an example of global cooperation. On the terroristic threats in the middle east, he stated firmly the terrorist “wave of destruction has gone beyond the Middle East and the Arab world and reached the shores of the United States and Europe,” he added. “Without the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. support for the Zionist regime, the terrorists would not have justification for their actions.”

President Obama and Putin are scheduled for an intense meeting this afternoon at the White House to discuss their differences on Syria and the Ukraine.

U.S. President Obama to Meet with Russian President Putin

In their first face-to-face meeting in nearly a year, President Obama and President Putin will meet in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly next week.

The meeting was at Putin’s request and officials believe the discussion will be over the situations in Ukraine and Syria. Press Secretary Josh Earnest reported to Fox News that Obama plans to warn Putin against boosting support for Bashar Assad and urge Putin to make more of a contribution in the fight against ISIS. President Obama also plans on using the meeting as a way to figure out Russia’s intentions in Ukraine.

“Given the situations in Ukraine and Syria, despite our profound differences with Moscow, the president believes that it would be irresponsible not to test whether we can make progress through high-level engagement with the Russians,” a senior administration official added.

However, Russian officials have stated that President Putin wants to focus the conversation on Syria.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters: “Of course, the primary topic will be Syria.” Asked whether Ukraine would be discussed, he said: “Well, if time allows.”

Tensions have been high between the United States and Russia after the U.S. and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia last year. The sanctions came after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Russia continues to deny that they are militarily involved in Ukraine.

The request for a meeting comes days after news agencies reported that Russia was building two more military facilities located on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.