Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have launched joint operations in the Sulu Sea off the north coast of Borneo, amid fears that the Islamist insurgency in the southern Philippines might spread throughout the region.

The Indonesian military said the joint maneuvers, which began on Monday from Tarakan island in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, were "in the spirit and centrality of ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], in maintaining stability in the region in the face of non-traditional threats such as piracy, kidnapping, terrorism and other transnational crimes in regional waters," read a statement to the media as quoted by the Straits Times.

Ministers and top army officials from the three countries, as well as defense ministers from Brunei and Singapore, attended the ceremonies which kicked off the mainly naval-based operation, although land and air forces are taking part as well.

Syrian military expert Hasan Hasan in an interview with Sputnik Arabic said that over the last six years the influence of the US in Syria has fallen, whereas the Russian role has grown and that clearly does not suit US' interests.

According to the military expert, currently the US is invading Syria's southern borders at al-Tanf.

"The Americans have installed missile systems in areas where there is no need to fight the terrorists. Moreover, these actions were not coordinated with the Syrian government. This all is happening in the framework of aggression against Syrian sovereignty," Hasan said.

Qatar says it will not negotiate with Arab states which cut diplomatic and travel ties with it earlier this month unless they reverse their measures, the country's foreign minister said.

"Qatar is under blockade, there is no negotiation. They have to lift the blockade to start negotiations," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told reporters in Doha, as quoted by Reuters. "Until now we didn't see any progress about lifting the blockade, which is the precondition for anything to move forward."

He went on to state that Qatar "cannot just have (vague) demands such as 'the Qataris know what we want from them, they have to stop this or that, they have to be monitored by a foreign monitoring mechanism."

Earlier, when discussing why the Syrian "rebels" fighting Assad are in "turmoil", we said that as a result of the ongoing Qatar crisis the various Saudi and Qatari supply chains supporting the rebels, both in terms of weapons and funding, had dried up due to the diplomatic fallout involving Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

"Together with Turkey and the United States, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been major sponsors of the insurgency, arming an array of groups that have been fighting to topple Syria's Iran-backed president."

We concluded that "the rebellion against Assad now seems moot, which is why the most likely outcome is a continued phase-out of support for forces fighting the Syria government until eventually the situation reverts back to its pre-2011 "status quo."

That, however, may have been premature as it was missing a key piece of data, one which was just revealed by the WSJ and which many had suspected. According to the Journal, Israel and Saudi Arabia have been alligned from the onset of the Syrian conflict, "with Israel supplying Syrian rebels near its border with cash as well as food, fuel and medical supplies for years, a secret engagement in the enemy country's civil war aimed at carving out a buffer zone populated by friendly forces."

The Israeli army is in regular communication with rebel groups and its assistance includes undisclosed payments to commanders that help pay salaries of fighters and buy ammunition and weapons, according to interviews with about half a dozen Syrian fighters. Israel has established a military unit that oversees the support in Syria—a country that it has been in a state of war with for decades—and set aside a specific budget for the aid, said one person familiar with the Israeli operation.

Saudi Arabia has detained three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards near the offshore Marjan oil field, the Saudi Information Ministry has said in a statement. The military reportedly seized a boat packed with "weapons for [a] subversive purpose."

The incident happened on Friday, when three boats entered Saudi territorial waters and headed towards offshore structures at the oilfield, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Monday, citing an official source.

"On Friday, 16th June, three small boats, bearing red and white flags, entered the Saudi territorial waters in the Arabian Gulf. They headed at speed towards platforms of Saudi oil field of Marjan. Immediately, the Saudi naval forces fired warning shots, but the boats did not respond," SPA quoted the source as saying.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced it is halting cooperation with its US counterparts in the framework of the Memorandum on the Prevention of Incidents and Ensuring Air Safety in Syria following the coalition's downing of a Syrian warplane.

The ministry has demanded a thorough investigation by the US military command into the incident with the Syrian government military jet, with the results to be shared with the Russian side.

"In the areas of combat missions of Russian air fleet in Syrian skies, any airborne objects, including aircraft and unmanned vehicles of the [US-led] international coalition, located to the west of the Euphrates River, will be tracked by Russian ground and air defense forces as air targets," the Russian Ministry of Defense stated.

Downing the military jet within Syrian airspace "cynically" violates the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, Russian military said.

The Russian Upper House is preparing a bill that would introduce an election monitoring ban for representatives of nations that ban Russian representatives from monitoring their own polls.

The deputy head of the Upper House Committee on International Affairs, Senator Andrey Klimov, told Izvestia daily that the bill is already in the works, and if passed, the ban would be enforced in the upcoming presidential election in 2018.

However, the head of the committee, Senator Konstantin Kosachev, told reporters that it was possible that a separate bill on the issue would be redundant.

"If we find that the Central Elections Commission has enough powers to decide on the issue, it would be possible simply to not send invitations to monitors from countries that do not demonstrate a similar approach to Russian monitors," Kosachev said.

Far from being the "democratic-leftist freedom fighters" that most Western audiences have been misled into believing that they are, the Syrian Kurds are a unipolar geopolitical proxy designed to carry out the post-war partition of the Arab Republic.

He Says, She Says

The US shot down a Syrian anti-terrorist jet near Raqqa yesterday, which prompted the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to send in a rescue mission to retrieve the downed pilot. Unfortunately, Al Masdar News (AMN) reported that they encountered intense resistance from the majority-Kurdish "Syrian Democratic Forces" (SDF), which if true, would mark the most serious escalation between these two sides. There's no reason to doubt AMN's coverage of this event because they've proven time and again to have reliable information acquired from on-the-ground and government sources, so it should be taken as a fact that the SAA and SDF did indeed clash last night.

The events leading up to that battle are unclear, however.

Intense clashes have broken out between the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the western countryside of Al-Raqqa, tonight, a military source informed Al-Masdar.

According to the source, units from the Syrian Arab Army attempted to cross SDF front-lines in order to rescue their fallen pilot; however, they were turned away by the latter.

This resulted in a fierce confrontation that is currently ongoing between the two entities near the key town of Resafa in western Al-Raqqa.

The pilot in need of rescue was identified as 'Ali Fahd, an officer in the Syrian Air Force from the city of Salamiyah in the eastern countryside of the Hama Governorate.

North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency accused the US of conducting a campaign of state terrorism in Syria, adding that Washington was hampering the Syrian government's attempts to preserve the territorial integrity of the country.

"Due to the terrorist actions under the guise of a government, the United States is in the way of the Syrian government [attempt] to preserve the territorial integrity of the country. It is like a stumbling block, while Yankees' missiles and bombs kill innocent people in different parts of the world," the North Korean state media outlet stated.

Russia has been supporting Damascus in its fight against terrorism since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011. It has been conducting an anti-terror aerial operation against Islamists since 2015. Moscow also carries out regular humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria.