© Reuters/Sergey Karpukhin
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke on the phone with his US counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, who expressed concern over Russian support to the Syrian leader.
"Kerry was also pushing the very strange idea that supporting Bashar Assad in his anti-terror fight only strengthens the positions of ISIS, because the sponsors of ISIS would pump even more arms and money into it," Lavrov said.
"It's an absolutely upside-down logic and yet another attempt to appease those who use terrorists to fight dissenting regimes," the Russian FM said, mentioning US attempts to cooperate with varrious extremist groups in Syria over the past few years.
"It's a colossal mistake that the US-led [anti-ISIS] coalition never considered interaction with Syria, not even information exchange," Lavrov said. "I cannot comprehend this logic, or rather absolute lack of logic."
"We help not only Syria, we also provide weapons to Iraq and other countries of the region that find themselves on the frontline with the terror threat. Equally for Iraq and other countries, we do so without any political preconditions," Lavrov said.
Earlier this week, the US State Department shared its concerns about allegations of a Russian military buildup in Syria.
In the statement, Kerry said that the US was concerned "about reports suggesting an imminent enhanced Russian buildup there."
Russia's flights with humanitarian aid to Syria also carry military equipment, and Russian military personnel are present in Syria because of the deliveries of weapons to the Syrian Army - all under old contracts, Lavrov said.
Russian weapons are only being delivered to Syria to fight terrorism, the Foreign Ministry's spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said Thursday. Guarantees against using the arms for other purposes "are provided in the two-way contracts, agreements and obligations that are struck between the two sides," Zakharova said at a press briefing.
"I can assure you that we are pursuing no other goal except fighting international terrorism by providing military and technical aid to Damascus," she added.
Comment: It's pretty clear that Russia is trying to help the Syrian government and aid its people in the extremely brutal war against the Western proxy army ISIS. In a move straight out of Dick Cheney's playbook, Russia is also having to contend with Western puppet states in Europe who are trying to block these humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria: Kiev joins Washington vassal Bulgaria in blocking Russian humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria
Russia believes that the Syrian Army is the only force that can effectively counteract Islamic State, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Thursday.
"There is simply no other organized and competent force out there that can resist the advance of ISIS," Peskov said. "Naturally, Russia sees its task in providing support to the Syrian authorities in battling this dangerous phenomenon, ISIS," he added.
Comment: Washington has been trying to "spin the war" and downplay the strength of ISIS in Syria: Intelligence rebellion: DoD analysts allege CENTCOM 'cooked' reports about war on ISIS. If ISIS is "weak" then there is no need for Russian help to the Syrian government, right? But if so, why has ISIS proved so difficult to defeat? Because the US and Saudi Arabia have been backing them in various ways, and the real reason that the U.S. does not want Russia involved is because they do not want ISIS defeated!
Washington has been striving to oust the democratically-elected President Assad for years now. To achieve their goal, the US is advocating a ban on all kinds of help to the Syrian government, with the country remaining in a state of US, Turkey and Saudi-Arabia-inspired civil war since February 2011.
Troops loyal to Assad are battling a number of terrorist enemies, most powerful of which are Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al Nusra Front. Only two states, Russia and Iran, support the Syrian government internationally, while all of the Arab world and particularly the Persian Gulf monarchies are backing what they call "moderate" Syrian rebel forces.
It's estimated that 220,000 people have died during the conflict, which has been going on for over four years.
"Kerry was also pushing the very strange idea that supporting Bashar Assad in his anti-terror fight only strengthens the positions of ISIS, because the sponsors of ISIS would pump even more arms and money into it," Lavrov said.
In fact, this is true and a warning to Russia, in a way. When the Soviet Union sent aviation in Afghanistan, the US has armed the Mujahideen with Stinger missiles. The US has made a film on this subject, in comic style (although they help development of terrorism):
Charlie Wilson's War is a 2007 American comedy-drama film, based on the story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson and CIA operative Gust Avrakotos, whose efforts led to Operation Cyclone, a program to organize and support the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War.
The film was directed by Mike Nichols (his final picture) and written by Aaron Sorkin, who adapted George Crile III's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.
On being asked, "about any regrets having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?"
Brzezinski replied - "What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?" (Le Nouvel Observateur, 1998)
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Hillary: "Let's remember here. The people we are fighting today, we funded twenty years ago and we did it because we were locked in trouble with Soviet Union they invaded Afghanistan and we didn't want to see them controlling central Asia and we went to work. It was president Regan in partnership with congress led by democrat’s who said you know what? Loving! Pretty good idea! lets deal with the ISI in the Pakistani military lets go recruit Mujahidin, that’s great, lets get some to come from Saudi Arabia and other places importing their WAHABI brand of Islam so that we can go to beat the Soviet Union and guess what? They retreated, they lost billion of dollars and it led to the collapse Soviet Union. So there is a very strong argument which is presence a bad investment in Soviet Union but lets be careful what we saw because we were harvest. So we then left Pakistan! We said OK fine you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country, you deal with the mines that are along the border and by the way we don't want to do any thing with you actually we were functioning you. So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI....."
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