Russia confounds U.S. with Syria military moves

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Middle East

Russia confounds U.S. with Syria military moves

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia are escalating over Russian airstrikes that are apparently serving to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad. Russia’s decision to intervene this week could prolong and exacerbate an already brutal conflict that has spawned the largest refugee crisis since World War II and helped the rise of the radical Islamic State. The Obama administration has been criticized, first for a delayed response to the civil war over the past four years and now for its hesitancy to take a firm position on Russia’s moves.
Such strikes have the potential to further alienate the remaining so-called moderate or nationalist elements of the Syrian antigovernment forces, potentially driving them toward more hard-line, Islamist militant groups.
Syrian President Bashar Assad
Some U.S. officials have welcomed a Russian role in Syria, provided it is limited to fighting the Islamic State and al-Qaida affiliates. But formulating a decisive response has been slow. Russia’s defense ministry said it had hit targets in Syria only belonging to the Islamic State militant group. However, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he had no indication that the Russians had hit IS targets. As of Thursday, meetings between the two countries had yielded only the beginning of military-to-military talks.
Our goals for this meeting are to facilitate the flow of information between coalition forces and Russian elements that will help us maintain the safety of our personnel in the region … to ensure that any additional Russian actions do not interfere with our coalition’s efforts to degrade and defeat IS.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter
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