Russia Defense Report - Feb. 27, 2016: Russian Military Advisers in Syria

It is no secret that Saudi Arabia, along with its Gulf and Western allies, has played a direct role in fueling the fires of grinding sectarian conflict that has kept Syria burning for the past five years. It is also no secret that Russian intervention has radically altered the kingdom's "regime change" calculus in effect since at least 2011. But an internal Saudi government cable sheds new light on the kingdom's current threats of military escalation in Syria.

Overthrow the Regime "by all means available"

A WikiLeaks cable released as part of "The Saudi Cables" in the summer of 2015, now fully translated here for the first time, reveals what the Saudis feared most in the early years of the war: Russian military intervention and Syrian retaliation. These fears were such that the kingdom directed its media "not to oppose Russian figures and to avoid insulting them" at the time.

Russia's military have stopped all airstrikes on those areas and armed groups which joined the ceasefire in Syria, the General Staff has said at a briefing.

"Russia has fully stopped carrying out airstrikes in "the green zone" - those areas and armed units that have sent us requests for a ceasefire," the chief of the main operations department of the Russian General Staff, Sergey Rudskoy, has told reporters.

The Syrian army and 17 armed units have pledged to abide by the ceasefire, he added.

"On February 23, the Syrian army declared that they have agreed to stop military action, in accordance with the US-Russia deal. Seventeen armed units addressed the command of the Hmeimim air base, and signed the application sheets, also pledging to respect the ceasefire," Rudskoy said.

Seventy Russian drones will be monitoring the ceasefire, it's been announced.

Militant groups in alliance with al-Nusra Front, which is excluded from the ceasefire agreement in force in Syria, have opened fire in civilian areas of Aleppo and Homs, a militia source told RIA Novosti on Saturday. The ceasefire took effect at midnight on Saturday, Damascus time (22:00 GMT on Friday). It does not apply to terrorist groups operating in the country, such as Islamic State (ISIL) and Nusra Front.

"The militants opened mortar fire in the Sheikh, Ashrafiyeh and Kurdish neighbourhoods of Aleppo. The shelling was conducted from the Bin Ziyad area, which is where groups that do not agree with the truce are located. Shelling from their side started right after midnight," the source said, adding that in Homs "militants opened fire on [Syrian] army positions."

According to the source, the militants are from the Liwa al-Sultan Murad group which has refused to comply with the ceasefire because of its alliance with al-Nusra Front. Liwa al-Sultan Murad controls one of Aleppo's central areas called Bustan al-Pasha.

Russia and the United States reached an agreement on the ceasefire in Syria on February 22. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Russia-US agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria on Friday. According to UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, 97 armed groups in Syria, plus the government and all the major regional and international stakeholders have expressed willingness to accept the framework of the cessation of hostilities.

As of this Saturday February 27th a peace proposal brokered by Russia and the United States is scheduled to take effect in Syria for one week. But if last Monday both the US and Russian presidents expressed hopeful optimism that the war in Syria might be coming to an end this Saturday, then why on Tuesday would Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain issue warnings to all its citizens in Lebanon to immediately evacuate as well as impose a travel ban to Lebanon. Beirut, Lebanon is located only 54 miles from Syria's capital Damascus. Hence, an invasion force through Lebanon seems a most plausible avenue given this scant piece of turf separating invading forces from their eyed prize - an overthrow of Assad.

To add weight to the high probability that neither US ally Turkey nor Saudi Arabia has any intention of complying with the truce, on Thursday Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated:

For us, the (Kurdish) YPG (militia) is a terror organization just like Daesh. The deal did not designate the YPG as a terrorist organization. That should have been done. But it should be known that this ceasefire deal is valid for Syria.

The Turkish leader in so many words is telling the world that the ceasefire only applies to Syria, not other nations like Turkey, Saudi Arabia or for that matter their 34-nation Sunni Arab coalition supplying 350,000 soldiers currently prepping in northern Saudi Arabia for the already declared Syrian invasion. The Machiavellian strategy of pure deception and attempted stealth deployed by a litany of US Empire lies and false flags would cunningly sign a truce just as its Arab allies pre-position themselves to move forward with a massive invasion by the Saudi-led Arab Antiterrorism Coalition (a misnomer if there ever was one) to invade Syria from all directions. This presentation examines the realistic and probable underlying plans still in place yet transparently masked by America's so called truce starting Saturday that the US will likely still permit its proxy nation allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia to spearhead their invasion of Syria already announced two week ago. It's the old "good cop-bad cop" strategy. While Empire signs agreements for peace, its bloodthirsty allies are lustfully preparing for war.

Despite a tentative ceasefire and truce negotiations being discussed by groups across Syria, terrorist groups not party to the ceasefire continued their attacks on Saturday, primarily aimed at civilians.

Although the Russian-US negotiated ceasefire largely held on its first day, a series of blasts occurred across Syria by terrorist groups not party to the negotiations.

In Damascus, the Jaysh al-Islam group, linked to al-Nusra Front and not subject to the ceasefire, shelled residential areas. Another group not subject to the ceasefire, Ahrar al-Sham, is also active in the area.

Britain will make a once-in-a-lifetime decision in the coming months on whether to leave the European Union. Both Washington and Moscow have a lot at stake. While the US needs Britain to remain within the EU in order to do its bidding, Russia's interests might be better served by a historic split.

The referendum on the so-called 'Brexit' is to take place on June 23. It follows Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announcing a reform package hammered out with other European leaders last week. Cameron is endorsing EU membership, claiming that his reforms have given Britons the 'best of both worlds' - that is, a measure of national independence while retaining economic benefits from being still part of the EU bloc.

The last time Britain held a similar referendum was back in 1975, when a strong majority voted in favor of remaining in the then 12-member European Economic Community (EEC). Four decades on, the EEC has transformed enormously to become the European Union of 28 member states, with a single currency for most of those members and a series of treaties that enshrine a project for federal political union. Cameron's reforms have secured a British opt-out from the federal project of 'ever closer union' as well as limited curbs on EU migrants' social welfare rights.

European ministers have embarrassed David Cameron by voting to impose an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia on the same day the British prime minister praised the UK for selling "brilliant" arms to the country. Speaking at a BAE Systems factory in Preston, the prime minister said the UK had pushed the sale of Eurofighter Typhoons to countries in the Middle East, including Oman and Saudi Arabia.

His comments come as a report by Amnesty International reveals that EU and US arms trading provided Saudi Arabia with arms worth billions of dollars in 2015. The Saudis are engaged in a military offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The latest figures from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) suggest some 6,400 civilians have been killed or injured in the conflict.

Cameron's speech in Preston came at the same time the European Parliament voted to impose an EU-wide ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia, citing criticism from the UN of its bombing in Yemen.


Asked at the talks how he was helping to export the planes, Cameron said: "With the Typhoon there is an alliance of countries: the Italians, Germans and ourselves. We spend a lot of time trying to work out who is best placed to win these export orders. We've got hopefully good news coming from Kuwait. The Italians have been doing a lot of work there. The British have been working very hard in Oman."

India and Russia are developing a road map for mutual settlements in national currencies which could open prospects for both countries, India's Ambassador to Russia Pankaj Saran told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

"Transition to mutual settlements in national currencies of the BRICS looks promising. Russian and Indian companies are interested in using national currencies in trade settlements," he said, adding that there is already a mechanism in place for them to use.

According to the ambassador, New Delhi and Moscow aim expanding economic and trade cooperation. They have already chosen priority sectors such as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, jewelry, technical equipment and machinery, oil and gas, and textiles.

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Moscow in December, the two countries set a goal of tripling trade to $30 billion over the next ten years and significantly boost mutual investment.

They also signed a number of multi-billion dollar defense and nuclear energy deals. India has approved the purchase of five S-400 air defense systems from Russia which is part of the biggest arms deal between the two countries in a decade.

Moscow said it will supply India with 10 million tons of oil annually in the next 10 years and build at least 12 new nuclear reactors by 2035.

If NATO hadn't ruined Yugoslavia, the country would be on par with major European powers, US political analyst Phil Butler notes, adding that the dismantling of Yugoslavia was part of the West's bigger plan to convert potential rivals into Third World regions.

Post-World War II socialist Yugoslavia was something of a European success story and it was that prosperity that prompted the Western political establishment to seek the country's dismantling, US political analyst Phil Butler emphasizes.

"Can you imagine Europe today with Yugoslavia as a key player among nations? I can. Yugoslavia was in fact, one of the greatest cultural and human experiments in history. Formed in the crucible that was the conflict in between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, Yugoslavia melded together people of both cultures, and in ways not seen since the time of Alexander the Great's assimilation of peoples after immense conquest," Butler writes in his article for New Eastern Outlook.

The political analyst underscores that the state was built on an idea that Southern Slavs should not remain a weak and divided people.