Syrian War: News #20

So apparently there are some new convoys coming from Turkey to the Idlib terrorist.

I do not not if believing, however, that they will bring there also additional militants. If they had those they would jot have needed to move a considerable quantity of sirian (and not) terrorists from northern Syria to Libya to continue the fight against Haftar.

Turkey is involved in at least two fronts now, and it is not clear if they have many more "moderate terrorists" to spare for additional operations. They could move them from the traditional kurdish areas to Idlib, but then they could face problems there.

Or they would have to send turkish army personnel, and not in observer/patrol duty, but in that case it would be more difficult to justify it as not an invasion, and the loss of considerable amount of turkish army soldiers could also cause internal protests and spell the end for Erdogan.

What Russia is doing is trying to get its objectives, without starting a hot war against everyone that has different goals.

I am not even sure that not having the ceasefire work in Lybia is a problem for Russia. Haftar is also not the most trustworthy individual, and if the ceasefire had worked, Turkey would have focused more of its concentration on Syria.

This way instead Turkey has to move militants and suppor to Lybia and they will die killed by haftar troops, but limiting Haftar victories for the moment.

@Radion


".......What Russia is doing is trying to get its objectives, without starting a hot war against everyone that has different goals........"

Everyone waiting to see what happens?  Why should Russia wait? Why should resistance front wait?  In IDLIB, we have a multi - national terror group. They have international agenda. For Russia in Chechnya. For China. For Iran. So we wait, and then they get stronger. Send Rats abroad. So best to destroy the Rat nest.

Russia or Iran, do not have to start direct war with Turkey or Usrael. Syria can do the fighting. It is their territory. But Russia can supply equipment and training. So if no Russian killed, so no danger of escalation with Turkey. And no fighting on Turkish territory. So little or no risk of Russia direct involvement.

But what I don't understand. Is why Russia not arm Syria properly? With ballistic missiles to hit back against Usrael strikes? With advanced fighters and Syrian pilots to stand upto Turkey F16? With long rang drone, to hit occupied oil in East? None of these actions, need involve Russia. And yet Syria will be secure and terror defeated and Yanks out! Russia then secure in Syria and war finished.

Because Putin has no balls to end this. Turkey began to play hard. Putin rolled his tail as usual.

Arrow wrote:Because Putin has no balls to end this. Turkey began to play hard. Putin rolled his tail as usual.

Yup. Putin is pretty soft. Erdogan is a very dangerous man. Erdogan plans to rebuild Ottoman empire.

nomadski wrote:@Radion


".......What Russia is doing is trying to get its objectives, without starting a hot war against everyone that has different goals........"

Everyone waiting to see what happens?  Why should Russia wait? Why should resistance front wait?  In IDLIB, we have a multi - national terror group. They have international agenda. For Russia in Chechnya. For China. For Iran. So we wait, and then they get stronger. Send Rats abroad. So best to destroy the Rat nest.

Russia or Iran, do not have to start direct war with Turkey or Usrael. Syria can do the fighting. It is their territory. But Russia can supply equipment and training. So if no Russian killed, so no danger of escalation with Turkey. And no fighting on Turkish territory. So little or no risk of Russia direct involvement.

But what I don't understand. Is why Russia not arm Syria properly? With ballistic missiles to hit back against Usrael strikes? With advanced fighters and Syrian pilots to stand upto Turkey F16? With long rang drone, to hit occupied oil in East? None of these actions, need involve Russia. And yet Syria will be secure and terror defeated and Yanks out!  Russia then secure in Syria and war finished.

Russia is not the soviet union, that gave for free a lot of stuff. Anyway Russia is already providing Syria with a lot of support and assistance snd equipment. Just it does not provide Syria for free with equipment to start a war with their neighbours. First they need to solve the militant problems in Idlib and Aleppo Regions, then try to get back under control the oil rich area east of deir ez zor, and only later about the illegal occupation from turkey in the north and Israel in the golan heights. Furthermore the presence of the turks helped mitigate the Kurdish problem.

Finally advanced fighters are not cheap, and Russia already moderniseda few syrian mig29. In the same way one could ask why Iran does not provide Syria with modern attack drones and medium range ballistic missiles.

@Rodion



"........Just it does not provide Syria for free with equipment to start a war with their neighbours........"

Who lives in Syria? Who has children in Syria? Who has land in Syria? Who will die for Syria? Only if you live in Syria, then you will die for Syria. For Syria. It is your territory. You are not just a visitor.

Do Russians live in Syria? Do they have children in Syria? Land? Work? Will they die for Syria, if they don't live in Syria?

And if they will not live in Syria and die in Syria, can they keep Syria as their own territory? Can anyone else?  Land belongs to those who work it.

And if Russians can not keep this territory, and they are just visitors. Then who will die for Syrian land? Who must fight for Syria? Against internal and external invasion?

And as a visitor, if we stop Syrians from fighting for their lands. Then they loose their home. And we can not visit.

@ KVS

"...... You really sound like an ingrate......." well KVS. It is not a matter of being ungrateful. Without Russia, the Middle East would be over run with ISIS. It is a matter of what do  next. What policy to adopt. How to bring war to end. What role for Russia or other states in Syria. A way of looking at problems.

"...... Russia is not obliged to fight wars with Turkey and the USA on its behalf......" Exactly the problem. You can not fight for a land that you ultimately do not live in. Yet you need to live and to die to protect that life.

"...... Here we see what trash humans really are. If you do something good for them, then they find all sorts of pretexts to hate you......." Agree that humanity has a lot of problems. But I think if you do something good, that it will last in people memory. Far longer than evil. The trick is not to follow the crowd. Not to fall victim to the falsehood of selfishness and greed.

Turkey sending more and more troops inside Syria. In my opinion it's only a bluff of Erdo, but hatred between real Arabs and Turks is so high that confrontation is 98 % sure. The TFSA, HTS etc are traitors and no real Arabs, they are fighting for a former colonial empire in wich they were treated like shit 100 years ago!

I think Russia will react defensive, today or yesterday a couple of F-16 were on the way to bomb SAA positions and intercepted by Su-35...NOTHING happened, jets of TuAF returned home. So every operation Turkey will start is a ground operation, with high posibility to be heavy bombed by SyAF or RuAf. If Turks are so stupid to attack Russian Base they will be punished heavy...
it's important how USA will react... maybe it's the prelude to WW3 for unshaved terroristic barbarians, spreading their fascist islamic ideology (I mean salafism...islam is okay)...but if this happens humanity deserves nothing better than destruction by nukes ;D LOL It was a JOKE!!! But USA will provide for sure intelligence data to Turkey.

What is really sad is, that all this means more dead and longer conflict in Syria!

If Turkey gambles too high they can lose EVERYTHING. They are the occupation force in Northern Cyprus, they are hated in the Arab World (colonial empire) and 20 % of turkish citizens are ethnic Kurds... Erdogan should take care

I think Greeks would love to intervene in a real hot conflict (going on for months) to take Cyprus again ;D

I agree with Garry and Kvs. Russia and Turkey have different goals, but they are also cooperating on a few important issues. Turkey know that they are not in the right in Syria, but Russia cannot afford a hot war with Turkey at the moment. What Russia is doing is supporting the Syria armed forces, and bombing Turkish proxies.

By the way, Iran's goals for Syria do not coincide with Russia's or even Syria's priorities/goals, even if they need to cooperate on many issues.

It is also possible that Turkey helps limiting Iranian influence in Syria, but i am not sure about this.

Syrian T-90 captured by the rebels during a counter-attack.

Syrians have also seized Nilib, this means they are about 8KM away from Idlib, however, their flanks would be far to exposed.

They need to seize Sarmin and a few other areas before they could even think about some Idlib push.

That said I don't think the Syrians have any plans to raid Idlib or try, I suspect they are taking these grounds to force the rebels to divert manpower away from other fronts which is a valid tactic

SeigSoloyvov wrote:

Syrians have also seized Nilib, this means they are about 8KM away from Idlib, however, their flanks would be far to exposed.

They need to seize Sarmin and a few other areas before they could even think about some Idlib push.

I assume this means that the defenders have quite a few fronts to defend so can't concentrate their forces in particularly vulnerable areas. The SAA trying to force them to spread out.

JohninMK wrote:

SeigSoloyvov wrote:

Syrians have also seized Nilib, this means they are about 8KM away from Idlib, however, their flanks would be far to exposed.

They need to seize Sarmin and a few other areas before they could even think about some Idlib push.

I assume this means that the defenders have quite a few fronts to defend so can't concentrate their forces in particularly vulnerable areas. The SAA trying to force them to spread out.

Has I said in my edit, I believe the SAA is trying to force rebel hands, etc doing this to purely force them to divert manpower away from other areas the SAA want.

It's an old tactic but an effective one. If they do not and the Syrians seize Sarmin this means Saraq is flanked and holding the city becomes pretty much pointless.

The rebels have to react and Ero is already going "thing has reached a point where patience is no longer possible". Sarmin and Nilib falling to the SAA would just be to catastrophic for Ero and the rebels.

Stuff is about to get spicy over there

Turkey excuse to support refugee, as reason to station troops in North Syria, can not be true. It is easy matter for Turkey to close border to Syria. Then if Turkey want to support refugee, it can send construction crew and supplies to build town near border area, inside North Syria, no need to be inside Turkey . If they refuse to close border, then Rats escape into Turkey, as before and cause explosion there. So Turkey should close border in West Syria. Withdraw troops. Allow positions to be taken over by Syrian border guards. It can for now keep troops in East Syria. To weaken Kurd separatist. In fact it should push further south, to push yank out.

@ Rodion

No country outside Syria can have exact same goals. Only the Syrians can. They are all Syrian. I agree with what you said before, about Iran supply attack drone and missiles to Syria. I don't know if they are doing this already. The reason may be that they don't want to upset Russians. Since Russia policy is avoiding direct conflict with Syria neighbours. And I think they view Iran, as being more aggressive in this regard. But as I said, all should agree that Syria has a right to defend. They should not only, not be stopped. They should be helped, to confront offensives by Turkey or Usrael or yanks.

@MK & SeigSoloyov

I think the tactic by SAA, should be like sharp Dagger, into major rebel position. To force set battles and avoid dispersing rebel forces. The SAA can then take advantage of superior firepower, to compensate for lower infantry numbers. Concentrated attacks. Hold ground.

SAA bombed turkey soldiers and killed ten or so of them. Turkey retaliated. Any news about that ?

Isos wrote:SAA bombed turkey soldiers and killed ten or so of them. Turkey retaliated. Any news about that ?

Heard 10 or so dead in return fire. Could be more, only the SAA would know the exact number.

Isos wrote:SAA bombed turkey soldiers and killed ten or so of them. Turkey retaliated. Any news about that ?

SAA is advancing in Idlib countryside, they cut of the M4 highway a few hours ago. They are only 8 km from Idlib City away. No real clashes between Turks and SAA, and they are only a few hundred meters to few km away around Saraqib. SAA can choose now to attack Saraqib, Idlib or Arihan. Saraqib is most important because it's the crossing of M4 and M5 highway.

Confirmed dead turkish soldiers are now 6, some other sources reporting 8 dead and more seriously injured.

Erdogan spoke about retaliation with F-16 jets, this is all blabla! Really today turkish helicopter and F-16 entered Idlib airspace for evacuation of wounded turkish soldiers. Russia assisted the turkish forces.

The whole situation is confusing...SAA is advancing in sight of turkish soldiers, still some artillery clashes, Erdogan is in furor but on other hand turkish army is only spectator... Maybe there is a deal between Russia and Turkey, because Turkey is warning Russia but not insulting. Russia on other hand tries to be more or less neutral, not allowing turkish jets in Idlib, but taking care that no turkish soldiers are hit. Russian have now a hard job in command center to avoid clashes between SAA and Turkey.

Now everybody is in Idlib (SAA, Iran, Turkey, Russia), they all speak about war, but none want really war. In my opnion it's only a bluff of Erdogan, but a really really really dangerous one!

And interesting fact...SAA and militias looks like a bunch of tourists ;D LOL and the army is small, but they are much more profesionell than years before. SAA is now a capable force! They losta T-90 tank, but the tank had a motor malfunction... I'm really surprised about the perfomance of SAA.

I was just readying that apparently the turks attacked the Syrian army from their observation posts, even from the ones that are surrounded by the SAA...

The turks also announced having killed many (they say 76) SAA soldiers.

In the meanwhile the SAA was able to cut the international road M4 (Aleppo-Lattakia) and the turks established another observation point on the M4 highway on the east of Saraqib.

Rodion_Romanovic wrote:I was just readying that apparently the turks attacked the Syrian army from their observation posts, even from the ones that are surrounded by the SAA...

The turks also announced having killed many (they say 76) SAA soldiers.

In the meanwhile the SAA was able to cut the international road M4 (Aleppo-Lattakia)  and the turks established another observation point on the M4 highway on the east of Saraqib.

Yes, true! They attacked from 4 observation posts, after unfortunately a few shells hit one outpost in Saraqib. One of the outposts they attacked from is deep inside Syrian territory. And from "deescalation zone" north of Aleppo they attacked Aleppo City.

The syrian death toll is wrong! It is more ~15 or so. They attacked only with artilery. No jets! Of course Turks announce 76 or better 1000 of SAA soldiers ;D

SAA is trying to enter Saraq from the west. Should they capture the city, they will then attempt to secure the M5 and then Sarmin and perhaps prepare for the Idlib assault.

turkey isn't happy with its proxies atm, Ero is quite pissed they let Nirab fall which allowed the SAA to flank Saraq, Turks weren't able to set up a roadblock in time. It appears they expected their proxies to be able to hold Nirab long enough.

They could attack Idlib without all of the M5 under their control it would just help them a lot to have it secured.

Definitely some bold moves by SAA, seems risky but if it works it will pay off handsomely

Russia seems to have give them leeway to engage Turkish troops on the basis of Erdogan getting creative with interpretation of agreements again (and I assume that they did their intel homework considering that they sanctioned this maneuver)

Well, you can only play it safe for so long in a war at times you will be required to make bold moves to win.

Whether they work out is another matter and many empires have turned to dust due to one failed bold move.