Syrian government troops backed by Russian air forces have started a large-scale offensive against ISIS terrorists and have already established control over a number of areas in different Syrian provinces.

The Syrian Arab Army has made significant progress in eliminating ISIS terrorists and destroying their command centers, ammo depots and vehicles in the Free Zone in Aleppo, as well as in 13 further towns and villages and two areas spanning Hama and Latakia provinces, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces announced in a statement on Monday.

The regime forces have been engaged in heavy fighting since the beginning of Russia's anti-terror operation in Syria. Russia's airstrikes mainly concentrate on the borders of Hama, Idlib and Latakia.
Control has been established over the towns and villages in the northern countryside of the Hama province including Kafar Nabouda, Oum Harten, Sekik, Tal Sekik, Tal al-Sakher, and al-Bahsa and others, the statement said as reported by Syria's SANA news agency.

Terrorists were ousted from the northern countryside of Lattakia province with Syrian troops establishing control over the towns of Jub al-Ahmar, Kafar Delbe, Katef Jouret al-Batikh hills and Ruwaiset Khandaq Jamo, according to the statement.

The Free Zone area in Aleppo province is also under the command of the Syrian army.

The EU foreign ministers expressed concerns over Russia's involvement saying during meetings in Luxembourg, its airstrikes hit not IS targets but "moderate" rebels and "must cease immediately."

The Russian Defense Ministry has been maintaining that Russian aircraft inflict almost surgical airstrikes on IS installations. Apart from those, only the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra front was targeted in one strike.

UK media allegations that RAF pilots in Iraq had been authorized to shoot down Russian fighters in case of imminent threat have prompted a response from Moscow. Britain's military says there is "no truth" in the reports.

The initial report was published by The Daily Star and The Sunday Times. It claimed that an "unidentified source" in the British military told the media that Royal Air Force's Tornado GR4 involved in Operation Shader in Iraq against Islamic State from now on are going to be armed with ASRAAM (AIM-132) short range air-to-air heat-seeking missiles to be prepared to "to shoot down Vladimir Putin's jets," The Sunday Times reports.

So far, the RAF jets took off armed with "500lb satellite-guided bombs only," but as the source in British Defense Ministry put it, "in the last week the situation has changed. We need to respond accordingly."

British pilots have been allegedly instructed to avoid contact with Russian aircraft. "The first thing a British pilot will do is to try to avoid a situation where an air-to-air attack is likely to occur — you avoid an area if there is Russian activity," an unnamed source from the UK's Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) told the Sunday Times. "But if a pilot is fired on or believes he is about to be fired on, he can defend himself. We now have a situation where a single pilot, irrespective of nationality, can have a strategic impact on future events."

"No one knows what the Russians will do next. We don't know how they will respond if they come into contact with a Western jet," the source said.The Russian Air Force is not executing any operations in Iraqi airspace, so in theory any interaction between Russian and British warplanes is out of the question. Yet the very raising of the issue provoked a hardline response from both the Russian Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry.

U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration's urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups.

Details of the air mission over Syria were confirmed by a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly because the details have not yet been formally announced.


C-17s, accompanied by fighter escort aircraft, dropped small arms ammunition and other items like hand grenades in Hasakah province in northern Syria to a coalition of rebels groups vetted by the US, known as the Syrian Arab Coalition. All pallets successfully were recovered by friendly forces, a U.S. official said.

Born in Argentina in 1928, Che Guevara was one of the main leaders of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that overthrew US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. After a period of leadership in the new Cuban government, he focused on supporting revolutionary activity in other countries, such as the Congo, and later in Bolivia. His stance against Western colonialism, imperialism, and hegemony became an inspiration for many around the world.

Sadly, when Guevara and other Cuban revolutionaries were in Bolivia to help topple the US-backed Bolivian government led by President René Barrientos, Che was captured by Bolivian troops working with the CIA. One day later, on October 9 1967, he was executed.

In the book Who killed Che?, authors Ratner and Smith argue that, based on previously published government documents, the CIA played a critical role in his murder. Smith said: "According to the [US] government, 'it was the Bolivians who did it, we couldn't do anything about it.' That's not true. This whole operation was organized from the White House by Walt Whitman Rostow. And the CIA, by then, had become a paramilitary organization."

As for the significance of Che, Ratner says he was "a symbol for revolutionary change... He still remains, of course, that today. If you go to Occupy Wall Street, if you go to Tahrir Square, you will see people who are wearing Che T-shirts, because they understand that their obligation, their necessity, is to take on the 1 percent. And that's what Che was about. And that's why I think he remains such a hero for people in the streets today."

Russia's military strength has apparently impressed Saudi Arabia. The new Saudi defense minister agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin that both countries should cooperate in Syria, DWN reported.

Russia and Saudi Arabia have surprisingly agreed on establishing closer coordination in Syria despite a number of disagreements.

A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the new Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud took place in Sochi.

After the talks, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Dschubeir said that his country is in favor of a dialogue between the current Syrian government and the opposition and that it would support the idea of a transitional government in the war-torn country.

Thus, the Saudis have given up their plan to immediately overthrow Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad, which can be considered a great achievement, taking into account the recent negative attitude of the Saudi authorities toward Russia's military involvement in Syria.

A recent US Senate hearing regarding Russia's ongoing air campaign in Syria plumbed dark depths when it was actually proposed by retired US Army General John M. Keane that "free zones" be established for armed militants, and populated with refugees to deter Russian attacks. In essence, General Keane's plan is to use refugees as human shields, and leverage any attack on this established "free zone" as a means of manipulating public opinion.

The US Strategy Until Now

The recent multinational anti-terror operation led by Russia at the request of the Syrian government has dealt the United States and its narrative regarding its own military intervention in Syria a severe blow.

It has become abundantly clear that not only has the United States been arming and funding extremists inside of Syria, including groups operating in tandem with listed terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front, it also appears that the US has feigned its campaign against the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS/ISIL).

Iraq's Air Force struck the convoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as he was about to meet with the terror group's top commanders, Reuters cited a military statement. The Baghdad Information Center has confirmed that the strike injured al-Baghdadi.

It's somewhat understandable that many in the West are confused by statements and rhetoric coming from certain Western quarters since Russian airstrikes commenced in Syria on September 30th, leaving them wondering: 'whose side are we on anyway?'. Given that the Western media has spent the last two years portraying ISIS as the epitome of evil, shouldn't the Russians' intervention, at the invitation of the Syrian government, be seen as a good thing? The results so far are impressive. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the following ISIS assets have been destroyed in the first week of bombing:

• 71 armored vehicles
• 30 other vehicles
• 19 command facilities
• 2 communication centers
• 23 depots with fuel and ammunition
• 6 plants used to make IEDs, including car bombs
• several artillery pieces
• several training camps

World leaders, if they really believe what they claim about ISIS being the number-one threat to global security, should be ecstatic. But they're not. Instead, we hear NATO Sec.-Gen. Jens Stoltenberg screaming about Russian 'aggression', and calling once more for more NATO troops all along Russia's European border and in Turkey.

America's 'coalition of 60+ countries' have allegedly been bombing ISIS inside Syria for just over a year. Given the contrast with Russian results in just one week, US-led airstrikes have been dismal (to say the least), with 'Islamic State' increasing, not decreasing its control of territory in Syria. What else can we conclude from this but that the US-led airstrikes have helped, not hindered, ISIS?

In retrospect, you really have to wonder about those reports of weapons air-drops 'accidentally' falling into the hands of ISIS terrorists. If we put that down to 'bad luck', then the US-led operation has been a complete failure, something acknowledged by top US military commanders testifying before the US Senate in recent months.

But it's one thing to be 'less than ecstatic', another to be so furious as to attack Russia's efforts to rout ISIS from the moment it got involved. 36 civilian casualties on the first day, they told us, citing the dubious, UK-based 'Syrian Observatory for Human Rights', an outfit run by one man from his 3 bedroom house in Kent, England.

On our weekly radio show last Sunday, I commented that the response from the U.S. and its Western allies to Russia's launch of an actual war on terrorism in Syria has been largely silence, deafening silence, a bit like Netanyahu's 'silence spectacle' at the UN recently, only even more deafening. So deafening in fact, that it came full circle and I began to hear something.

At first it was just a mealy-mouthed American-accented, 'Russia is making things worse'. But it quickly grew in strength to announce in a Queen's English accent, "we're bombing ISIS too you know!" And before long it had become a cacophonous coprocopia about Russia "killing innocent civilians in Syria" and, most recently, "dangerously invading the airspace" of our NATO ally Turkey.

Still, it was, and is, all 'sound and fury', because the bottom line is that U.S. has had its 'war on terror' bluff called in spectacular fashion by Russia and there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that the terror masterminds in Washington and Langley can do about it, short of declaring war on Russia.

The only more or less honest statements about Russia's move into Syria from the West have come from the same person, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, head of U.S. European Command. Speaking on Sept. 28th at a meeting in Berlin of the 'German Marshall Fund' - a US think tank that commemorates the Marshall Plan, an initiative through which the USA gained economic control over most of Western Europe after WW2 - Breedlove said that Russia had installed "very sophisticated air defense capabilities/anti-access area denial" that were not aimed at the Islamic State but "about something else". Of course, "something else" here means "NATO bombs".

There's an increasing number of reports stating that after just a week of Russian airstrikes against ISIL (Islamic State) positions, there's panic and desertion everywhere. About a thousand extremists have already abandoned their positions in Syria and are now heading in the direction of Iraq, Turkey and a number of European states. Successful operations carried out in cooperation with the regular Syrian army has not only managed to interrupt a series of relatively easy victories that ISIL had been scoring on the field of battle, but also stopped the flow of militants from abroad.


According to the Arabic television channel Al-Mayadeen, ISIL members are urgently evacuating their families, fearing new air raids. In a situation where command centers are getting obliterated, there's desertion to be found everywhere. According to numerous experts, just the first few days of Russia's campaign have caused the Islamic State more damage than a year of the so-called "war on terrorism" in Syria, launched by the United States, and then supported by the UK, France, Germany Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.

The successful counterattack of the Syrian army, with Russian warplanes flying close air support, aggravated the already complicated relations between militants of this Islamist organization, causing morale to sink lower. It went as far as forcing ISIL to create a special "military police", that is now entrusted with the duty of checking special papers that testify that a militant is carrying out his duties in a designated location.