Free Syrian Army
© Khalil Ashawi / Reuters Free Syrian Army fighters
Warplanes of the Russian task force in Syria deliver from 30 to 40 airstrikes daily in support of the Free Syrian Army, Russia's General Staff reports. Some 5,000 FSA troops together with the Syrian Army are on the offensive in Hama, Homs, Aleppo and Raqqa provinces. The number of FSA personnel that have come over to the Syrian Army is constantly growing, Russia's Defense Force Chief of Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, said.

He added that Russia's task force in Syria is also supplying FSA units with "weapons, munitions and other material supplies." In this way, Russia is "promoting the [Syrian] government troops and opposition groups joining efforts to defeat the terrorists," the general said.

According to the General Staff, for the purpose of cutting the terrorists off financing, Russian jets bomb oil processing Islamic State- (IS, formerly ISIS) controlled infrastructure, such as oil refineries, oil pipeline pumping stations, oil tankers in the locations where they concentrate en route to the Turkish border.


Gerasimov said that Russian task force in Syria is delivering bomb and missile strikes solely on installations of terrorist infrastructure. He added that Russia has so far received no substantial support from countries that Moscow considered partners in regard to fighting terrorism in Syria.

"In the course of battling radical Islamism we've no received support on the part of those [countries] we used to believe to be our partners. On the contrary, we received a stab in the back with a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet violating Syrian airspace and downing our Su-24," General Gerasimov said at a briefing for foreign military attachés in Moscow.