Obama rejects Russian approach to ending Syrian war

This closely parallels what the Russians have been saying about how every element of the Syrian opposition consists of “terrorists” who are advancing the interests of ISIS and/or al-Qaeda, including the “moderate” Syrian rebels the Obama Administration has been arming and training.

Sanctions on a few Russian individuals and entities are in place already.

The Syrian civil war has brought together a disparate collection of rebel groups united in their effort to oust Assad. Consequently, British bombing so far has only targeted Islamic State in neighboring Iraq. But we are coordinating airstrikes in Syria as well as Russian Federation.

The USA side proposed using specific global radio frequencies for distress calls by military pilots flying in Syrian airspace, but he was not more specific about that or other proposals. “On that basis we have to hold everyone to their responsibilities”, Hollande said after the meetings in Paris.

He also said a Russian Air Force bomber had struck an Islamic State camp and destroyed with a KAB-500 bomb seven pieces of heavy military equipment, a weapons store as well as a terrorist fortification.

The Russian Interfax news service, which has close ties to the government, said the missile cruiser “Moskva” and an unspecified force of other ships in the region would begin military drills to prepare for a possible aerial attack.

“Our focus and our determination is to defeat ISIL”, Warren said.

“We are prepared to work with him if he was willing to broker a political transition…”

Rubio accurately predicted during the second Republican debate in September that the Kremlin would begin airstrikes in Syria “in the next few weeks”.

“It’s an extraordinarily complex battlefield”, he said.

Obama would not say when asked by a reporter whether he felt Putin had been dishonest in not laying out his intentions in conversations with the White House before the strikes.

At a separate briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook deflected similar questions. “We are not going to cooperate with a Russian campaign to simply try to destroy anybody who is disgusted and fed up with Mr. Assad’s behavior”.

Obama scoffed at the notion that he is weaker than Putin, citing Russia’s damaged economy under U.S.-backed sanctions over Ukraine and its lack of success in the Middle East.

4,052,723 The number of people who have fled Syria’s violence and registered as refugees with the United Nations.

Maarat al-Numaan, in Syria’s northern province of Idlib, is not known as an Islamic State base. “We fight terrorism”, he said. “This is the same position which the Americans are taking”.

Syrian opposition groups, including a few that were US supplied, protested vehemently.

Jabal al-Zawiya is mainly controlled by al-Nusra Front and other Islamist rebel groups.

Turkey and its allies are concerned that the Russian airstrikes could be serving to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad rather than hitting Islamic State fighters.

For Syrian opposition groups, Kozak said, the Khorasan Group is a virtual fiction.

“They discussed measures to ensure the safe use of aviation over Syrian territory, including through the engagement of the potential of the information center recently set up in Baghdad”, Konashenkov said in a televised statement on Friday. By Russia’s reasoning, the coalition conducting strikes against the Islamic State in Syria, led by the United States, is an aggressor.