Syria Conflict: Russian Federation Pounds ISIS Targets

The group’s next meeting is scheduled to take place in Paris either in late December of early January 2016 – by which time we will be deep in winter, and it will be possibly too late for numerous innocent victims of the Syrian conflict: the countless refugees spilling out into neighbouring countries, desperate for the diplomatic wrangling to count for something and save their lives. “But there’s little, if anything, that’s been agreed on Syria”.

Cutting a deal with Assad would be the “lesser evil”, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said Wednesday.

We saw the first slight signs of a shift on this point at Syrian peace talks in Vienna, where the USA signaled a few patience on the subject of Assad’s future.

Specifically, Hollande knows that for his proposed coalition to bear fruit, he needs to convince two of the most active players in Syria – the United States and Russian Federation – to put aside their strategic differences and increase their practical cooperation.

Russia has since intensified its attacks on Islamic State group strongholds in Syria with the Russian military reporting that it fired 18 cruise missiles on Friday, destroying seven “Islamist” targets in Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

The bombers flew from a base on the Kola Peninsula over the Norwegian Sea, the North Atlantic and the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean to launch distant cruise missiles on targets in Syria.

Russian Federation blames the West for the persistent deadlock. He’s consulting with members of the coalition who have pledged to destroy the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS. Council diplomats said work on it has yet to begin.

British United Nations Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters he expected it would take “weeks, not days” to draft a resolution establishing a ceasefire monitoring mechanism. That task has been assigned to Jordan.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Syrian opposition groups would soon convene to determine representatives for negotiations about a political transition in the war-torn country.

Iran, which participated for the second time in the talks on Syria, stated that it will not settle for strain for the ouster of Assad underneath the pretext of fixing the Syrian disaster. Like Russian Federation, Iran has provided generous military support to Damascus and is standing by Assad. The operation deprived ISIS of $1.5 million in daily income from oil sales, Shoigu said.

Russian state TV on Friday showed Russian air force ground crew writing “For Ours!” and “For Paris!” on bombs being attached to Russian warplanes.

Russian Federation has acted quickly since then, doubling its airstrikes against terrorist groups in Syria on Tuesday.