Russia, U.S. to hold military-to-military talks on Syria: Pentagon

The Russians have complained about the narrow scope of the USA talks, and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Moscow wants broad discussions on global cooperation with the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State.

The suspension of the “train and equip” program aimed at fielding moderate rebels to fight ISIS in Syria was announced Friday by the Pentagon, as the Obama administration overhauls its struggling program. Russian Federation said all of its missiles fired from warships hit their targets.

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (L) speaks as US Secretary…

Two small groups of US-trained fighters have crossed into Syria from training centres in Turkey or Jordan this year: the first broke up after coming under attack from the Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda franchise. It acknowledged the failure of its $500 million campaign to train thousands of fighters and said whatever money remained would be used to provide lethal aid for groups already engaged in the battle. Those groups have made significant progress against strongholds of the Alawites, Assad’s sect, but are now under Russian bombardment, officials said.

“The proposition that there is a moderate Syrian opposition with enough military potential and-even more importantly-popular support inside Syria to overthrow the Assad government is a myth”, foreign policy experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote for Consortium News one year ago.

Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the northern city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite an intensifying Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group.

Moreover, the leaders of America’s two most important allies in the Muslim world, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are determined that Assad should go (mainly because he is Shia, and they are Sunnis), and they would be very angry if the United States helped him survive.

But the Caspian Flotilla, founded by Peter the Great in 1722 and headquartered in Astrakhan – a city on Russia’s south coast celebrated for its watermelons and dried fish – was the only choice for Russian generals wanting to showcase their military reach in the Syrian conflict.

A senior US defense official, speaking condition anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said the program is not being abandoned or ended completely.

Defense Department officials have said there have been no incidents or conflicts with the Russians in the last day or so. The covert Central Intelligence Agency program is the only way the U.S.is taking on Assad militarily.

Last week, Mr. Obama agreed to add “more capacity” to both the Syrian Kurdish forces and their Arab partners operating in northern Syria in areas east of the Euphrates River, with the goal of putting more pressure on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, officials said. In previous updates Russian Federation has reported hitting 10 targets daily. “So we have devised a number of different approaches”.

A total of 70 U.S.-trained and equipped rebels entered Syria on Sept.19.

Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press and by Michael D. Shear, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times.