Coalition under El Bab

New allies of Russia are militants of the Free Syrian Army

A year ago, Russia and Turkey were on the verge of war after the Turkish F-16 was shot down by the Su-24M bomber, leaving the Turkish border after the bombing of the positions of the Turkoman (Turkmen) detachments of the Free Syrian Army (SSA) in the northern part of the Syrian province of Latakia. The first goal of the VKS in Syria in 2015 was to knock out militants who fell on distant approaches to the Khmeimim air base. The Turkmen mountains in the Northern Latakia mercilessly bombed, the Turkish-speaking population fled, the Turkish authorities and the military answered, knocking down the Su-24M. The year passed, and everything changed: the Air Force and the Air Force of Turkey, together, with the PR tank, bomb the city of El Bab in the province of Aleppo, where the IG militants settled (prohibited in Russia).

However, the head of the General Staff General Sergei Rudskoy, talking about the remarkable coordination of joint operations with the Turks, somehow forgot to mention that El-Bab would specifically storm with the support of Turkish tanks, special forces and artillery precisely the detachments of the SSA, which the official Damascus considers terrorists,

Turkish Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, like many in Turkey, considers the Syrian Turkmen-Sunnis foreign compatriots. The Turkmen militia, the Syrian Turkmen brigades have been fighting with the regime of the Russian ally of President Bashar al -Assad since 2012 and are directly supported by Ankara. On the morning of November 24, 2015, the crew commander Lieutenant Colonel and Hero of Russia (posthumous) Oleg Peshkov was shot by the militants when he was descending by parachute. On the same day, the Turkmen militants from the SSA knocked out the Mi-8 multi-purpose helicopter, which flew out in search of the Su-24M crew. The Matros of the Sailor Alexander Pozinich was killed, and the Mi-8 was destroyed on the ground by the American guided anti-tank missile Tow. Peshkov’s body took the militants to Turkey, and Ankara handed it to Russia with military honors.

In November 2016, the Turkish troops, by secret consultation with Moscow, along with the militants of the SSA (primarily Turkmens) crossed the Syrian border and began the operation “Euphrates Shield” to expel from the zone north of the Aleppo forces of the IS and, at the same time, the detachments of Kurdish folk self-defense (Yeekîne Parastina Gel or YPG). The Kurds before that they tried to oust from there igs, but for Ankara, the further expansion of the YPG control zone is unacceptable - they consider them “terrorists” and a branch of the Kurdish labor party banned in Turkey (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or PKK). In Moscow, YPG has an official representative office for almost a year, and PKK has its own newspaper and a rather developed infrastructure.

The Turks, along with the SSA, quickly occupied the territory directly near the border, but then they stuck, storming El Bab (40 km north of Aleppo; 30 km south of the Turkish border; 60 thousand people before the war). The Turks, like Russians and Americans, fight in Syria, if possible, unknown in order to avoid losses, and they send native infantry forward, but the SSA units will not cope with the desperately defending IS fighters, despite support. The Turks, probably, could bomb El Bab into the dust with the IS garrison, but this is undesirable: the population of El Baba is the Arabs-Sunnis, and it was their Erdogan who promised to “free”.

In the protracted siege of El Baba, they came together like brothers in arms: Turkish military, our VKS and militants of the SSA. The suburbs of El Baba bombed on January 18 symbolically parity: four Su-24M, four Su-25 attack aircraft and one Su-34 bomber, and four F-16 and four F-4 from the Turks. The same types of aircraft that on November 24, 2015 came together in an air battle.

Perhaps among the Turkmen fighters, which are besieged by El Bab, there are those who shot the Russian military on November 24, 2015. Now they are all on one side.

There is also American special forces in the Al-Baba area-to identify goals and adjust the possible air strikes of anti-sig of coalition. At a small Syrian town, the “Antihitler coalition” against IGs, to which Vladimir Putin in September 2015 in New York at the UN General’s introduction before the troops entered Syria, was once in a miniature town.

Next week, a conference on Syrian reconciliation in Astana should begin with the participation of the military delegation of the militants of the Syrian opposition. With the support of Turkey, Russia obviously hopes to break the most significant part of the “moderate” militants who should agree to a truce with the Assad regime and to participate in the war against the “terrorists”-primarily the IG, and not only using the format of the joint operation in El Babe. No stable settlement in Syria is possible without the involvement of significant forces of the opposition Sunni fighters representing the majority of the country's population in the civil war.

Moscow seeks to preserve military bases and influence in the postponed Syria and from here to spread the influence throughout the region, and this is impossible without support on the Sunnis and mass shifting of the former “terrorists”, without the formation of a kind of corps of the Syrian “Kadyrovites”. The support only on the Alawit minority of President Assad and on Shiite Iran drives Russian politics in the Middle East to a dead end. Moreover, Tehran has its own political agenda, which considers Moscow the younger, in fact, a partner who plays a purely official role: to bomb, supply weapons and specialists.

Ankara demands to write down in the “terrorists”, exclude from the peace process and give it to a pieces of PKK, YPG, and Moscow seemed to agree. Tehran demanded that the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, as well as the new administration of Donald Trump, are excluded from the negotiations in Astana, which contradicts both Russian and Turkish long -term calculations. Aside from the Syrian settlement, the most powerful state of Israel in the military and technological sense remains, with which Russia is closely cooperating, while our friends seek to destroy. Military and political players in the Middle East have long learned to cynically use world powers, and then change the patrons.

Fossed enemies easily turn into friends, and yesterday's friends are even faster - into enemies. Hoping for someone’s gratitude is ridiculous. An attempt to replace (supplant) America from the blood saturated with blood and oil with each step is more expensive, and hope seems to be more and more foggy to round the Syrian campaign without any problems.