Above, Russian troops in Syria. Russia is building a military base in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s heartland. It is the clearest indication yet of deepening Russian support for the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Russia has set up an air traffic control tower and transported prefabricated housing units for up to 1,000 personnel to an airfield serving the Syrian port city of Latakia.
Russia has also requested the rights to fly over neighboring countries with military cargo aircraft during September, according to the reports.
Russian is expanding its role in the country’s civil war and will ratchet up tensions between Moscow and Washington over the future of Syria and Assad.
Obama and King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Friday repeated their demand that any lasting settlement in Syria would require an end to the Assad regime.
It leaves the US and Russia implacably opposed in their visions for Syria.
John Kerry, Secretary of State, telephoned his Russian counterpart to express U.S. concerns on Saturday.
Kerry made it clear Russian actions could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-Isil coalition operating in Syria. However, keep in mind it was the U.S. and its Sunni allies who trained, financed and unleashed the terrorist thugs on Syria.
This past week Vladimir Putin gave his strongest admission yet that Russia was already providing some military and logistical support to Syria.
“We are already giving Syria quite serious help with equipment and training soldiers, with our weapons,” he said during an economic forum in Vladivostok on Friday.
Russian backing has included financial support, intelligence, advisers, weapons and spare parts. Mr Putin insisted it was "premature" to talk of a direct intervention.
Russian troops are said to be 'fighting alongside Assad's army against Syrian rebels'
Syrian state television showed images of an advanced RussianLast week the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahro-built armored personnel carrier, the BTR-82a, in combat. Videos also began circulating in which troops shouted orders to one another in Russian. noth cited Western diplomatic sources saying that Russia was on the verge of deploying “thousands” of troops to Syria to establish an airbase from which the Russian air force would fly combat sorties against Isil.
Those details appear to be backed by satellite images of a Russian base under construction near Latakia, according to anonymous U.S. intelligence officials.
Moscow increasingly justifies its support for the Assad regime by pointing to the rise of violent jihadists in Syria. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has captured a swath of territory since Arab Spring protests in 2011 provoked a heavy-handed regime crackdown.
The Syrian conflict is one of the key drivers for the wave of refugees arriving in Europe. Syria, before the current conflict had a population of 22 million, now its population of 11 million!
And fresh clashes along the border with Turkey claimed the lives of 47 fighters at the weekend, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syria is already home to Russia’s only base outside the former Soviet Union – a naval station in Tartus.
The reported build-up of military activity, centred on Latakia and Idlib province, is in areas dominated by the Alawite sect, which counts President Assad among its number.
By the way, a confidential source has told me that U.S. Marine special forces are fighting ISIS in Syria and the Ukraine.
By the way, a confidential source has told me that U.S. Marine special forces are fighting ISIS in Syria and the Ukraine.
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