Exclusive: Russia steps up military lifeline to Syria's Assad - sources

Reuters via Yahoo! ^ | Jonathan Saul

[cunning_fish]

LONDON (Reuters) - In recent weeks Russia has stepped up supplies of military gear to Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs, boosting President Bashar al-Assad just as rebel infighting has weakened the insurgency against him, sources with knowledge of the deliveries say.

Moscow, which is trying to raise its diplomatic and economic influence in the Middle East, has been a major provider of conventional weapons to Syria, giving Assad crucial support during the three-year civil war and blocking wider Western attempts to punish him with sanctions for the use of force against civilians.

The new Russian supplies come at a critically fluid stage of the conflict, with peace talks scheduled for next week in Switzerland, the factious opposition losing ground, and Western support for the rebellion growing increasingly wary of the role played by foreign militants. Syria has even said some countries formally opposed to Assad have begun discussing security cooperation with his government.

Several sources told Reuters that Assad's forces had since December received deliveries of weaponry and other military supplies, including unmanned spy drones known as UAVs, which have been arranged by Russia either directly or via proxies.

"Dozens of Antonov 124s (Russian transport planes) have been bringing in armored vehicles, surveillance equipment, radars, electronic warfare systems, spare parts for helicopters, and various weapons including guided bombs for planes," a Middle East security source said.

"Russian advisers and intelligence experts have been running observation UAVs around the clock to help Syrian forces track rebel positions, analyze their capabilities, and carry out precision artillery and air force strikes against them," said the source, who declined to be identified.

[The Right wing Infidel]

Thats good news. Im no fan of assad but the “rebels” are made up of al quida and taliban scum and they need to be defeated, having assad in control is far better then al quida.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Looks like Putin wins again—but in this case—its the lesser of two evils. Watch as Putin moves into Egypt next and then South Sudan.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Helping Muslims kill one another is not a bad thing from a Russian perspective - as long as they do it far away from Russia.

[ETL]

Helping Muslims kill one another is not a bad thing from a Russian perspective - as long as they do it far away from Russia.

Russia has a history of also helping our enemies kill Americans. They back the islamo-terrorist sponsor of Iran who backs the militia in Iraq. They aided Saddam Hussein even after the war began. They continue to supply arms and make deals with various marxist/socialist dictatorships hostile to the US throughout Latin America. They stand behind North Korea and the ChiComs. In fact, they've been conducting joint war games with the ChiComs since 2005 in preparation for a confrontation with the West.

[ETL]

September 2013:

“An Iranian order intercepted by the United States instructs Shiite militia groups in Iraq to attack the American Embassy in Baghdad should the U.S. strike Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-iran-message-orders-iraqi-militias-to-retaliate-if-us-strikes-syria/

[Colonel Kangaroo]

We have to be honest and admit that the Russians and Iranians reacted to American troops in Iraq about the same way that we would to a Russian army invading Mexico or Peru. The US has as about as much legitimate reason to be in the Middle East as Russia has to put an army in the Western Hemisphere. The Cold War was a one time special case that needed to be won until the USSR fell and Europe recovered, but it’s now past time to return to the true traditional conservatism of George Washington and Robert Taft.

[SeminoleCounty]

Looks like Russia doesn’t want to kill the Christians and Jews of Syria (who are protected by Assad)

Another blow to the Putin Haters here on FR

[ETL]

You are OK with Russia supplying arms and assistance to our enemies??

[Gen.Blather]

Let’s take the long view. What did the US get from the Viet Nam war? Our soldiers were trained and practiced a new kind of warfare. So, when other wars erupted we had battle trained commanders in much of the higher ranks. We developed new technology, such as the laser guided bomb and, eventually, the F-15. (The F-4 was largely a failed design in Viet Nam.) We developed deployable battery powered intelligence gathering devices. I’m sure there are other positive aspects if one ignores the politics, they waste and the loss of life.

Now, what will Russia take away from Syria a decade or two hence? Perhaps more cost effective methods for quickly making and moving weapons. I’m guessing they’re pressing ahead with cheaper, more effective drones. Probably they’re developing methods, possibly satellite mounted, that will spot everything there is to know about a territory in one pass. It will tell them where the people are, the enemy, the friendlies, the logistics, the weapons. They’ll probably have a computer prioritize targets and program and control the drones that will prosecute the war around the clock.

Incidentally, they haven’t given Assad tactical nukes yet, but don’t bet against it. Russia doesn’t give up investments easily and they’ve made a big one in Syria.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Probably about as enthused as Putin is about our supplying arms and assistance to Russia’s enemies.

[ETL]

What the heck is with these supposed freepers who keep defending this former KGB thug Putin? The guy is an evil POS. He thinks the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” was the COLLAPSE of the mass murdering communist Soviet Union. He thinks Stalin deserves statues in his honor. He ‘eliminates’ or otherwise ‘silences’ his political opposition in Russia and elsewhere (journalists, foreign leaders, former KGB agents who spilled the beans on him). He’s surrounded himself with an abundance of former KGB and FSB thugs. Russia, under him, is allied with numerous marxist/socialist regimes in Latin America, including Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. They’ve been conducting joint military exercises with the Chinese communists since 2005 preparing for war with the US and our allies.

[ETL]

(KGB) Putin thinks the "COLLAPSE" of the communist Soviet Union was the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century"! In other words, the mass murdering communist Soviet Union was just about the best thing that happened for the world in the 20th Century (according to him).

"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'
https://web.archive.org/web/20060116060511/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
____________________________________________________

"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
https://web.archive.org/web/20091023201023/http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=
____________________________________________________

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor as much as the late British lord protector, a 'cunning fellow' who "played a very ambiguous role in Britain’s history."

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html

[ETL]

Putin praises Cold War moles for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets
Reuters ^ | Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:04pm EST | Steve Gutterman

Vladimir Putin praised Cold War-era scientists on Thursday for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets so that United States would not be the world's sole atomic power, in comments reflecting his vision of Russia as a counterweight to U.S. power.

Spies with suitcases full of data helped the Soviet Union build its atomic bomb, he told military commanders.

"You know, when the States already had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels," Putin said, according to state-run Itar-Tass.

"The were carrying the information away not on microfilm but literally in suitcases. Suitcases!"

Putin's remarks referred to the dawn of the Cold War more than half a century ago, but they echoed a message he has made loud and clear more recently: that the United States needs to be restrained, and Russia is the country to do it. …

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...

[ETL]

From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

"KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts — in Russia and the West — have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..." (continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

[ETL]

From April 22, 2012 (Lenin's birthday)...

China-Russia Yellow Sea naval drills begin
AP via Yahoo News ^ | April 22, 2012

BEIJING (AP) — China and Russia launched joint naval exercises Sunday that highlight warming ties between their militaries and growing cooperation in international affairs.
[snip]
"It's an excellent exchange for China to be able to drill jointly in such sensitive areas," Yin told CCTV.
[snip]
Much of that cooperation takes place within the confines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping of Central Asian states that seeks to check U.S. influence in the region and began holding joint drills in 2005.

Formerly Cold War rivals for leadership of the communist world, China and Russia have since found common ground in countering liberal democratizing trends across Asia and Eastern Europe and frequently vote against Western initiatives in the United Nations Security Council. ..."

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
_____________________________________________

_____________________________________________

From the Sino-Russian Joint Statement of April 23, 1997:
"The two sides [China and Russia] shall, in the spirit of partnership, strive to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag01.html
______________________________________________________________

"Joint war games are a logical outcome of the Sino-Russian Friendship and Cooperation Treaty signed in 2001, and reflect the shared worldview and growing economic ties between the two Eastern Hemisphere giants."

http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2005/09/war-games-russia-china-grow-alliance

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170287,00.html

[ETL]

Chinese armored forces advance in Peace Mission-2013

Xinhua | 2013-8-10

A Chinese helicopter hovers the field for drill as Chinese armored forces advance during the Peace Mission-2013 China-Russia joint military drill in Chelyabinsk, Russia, on August 9, 2013. The 20-day Peace Mission-2013 China-Russia joint military drill began in Chelyabinsk on July 27. (Xinhua/Xian Yunqiang) 

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/802946.shtml

[servantboy777]

I say...keep on arming the rebels. Russia, keep on arming Assad. Escalate the civil war ten fold.

After the dust settles, there be a few hundred thousand LESS muzzies to have to deal with in Europe, Africa, America.

These people been fightin for thousands of years. It's even prophesied in the bible to be this way.

Gen-16:11.The angel of Yahweh said to her, “Behold, you are with child, and will bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because Yahweh has heard your affliction.
12 He will be like a wild donkey among men. His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. He will live opposite all of his brothers.”

Descendants of Ishmael are the Arabs. If they are not fighting Israel or the U.S., they are fighting their neighboring country. If not the neighboring country, another tribe or sect of a tribe.

Point being....where there's a muzzie, there's trouble.

[ETL]

I wish those islamo-facist idiots in Syria and elsewhere would kill each other too. I was just pointing out that Putin and the Russians are no friends of the US, and are increasingly something for us to be seriously concerned about.

[servantboy777]

Oh, I agree. Sorry, my thoughts drifted.

Your right. Putin sees geopolitics as a big ol chess game.

He even fooled Bush. Remember when baby Bush came back from Russia and claimed he'd looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul.

Uh...yea, right. Bush saw exactly what Putin wanted him to see. Every since, Putin's squashing political decent, strengthening it's military and making plays reminiscent of the old Soviet Union.