Syrian rebels recapture village in west

“It was a center for the gathering of regime forces and a point of departure for its operations”, said Fares al-Bayoush of rebel group Fursan al-Haq, which is fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

Russia’s foreign minister said Monday the next round of Syria talks expected to be held this weekend must not focus squarely on demands for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s resignation, which he called a “simplistic approach”.

This week, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said Russian Federation was seeking its own interests in Syria regarding the future of President Assad, and suggested that Russian Federation may not care about keeping Assad in his post the same way the Iranians do.

The Russian government has repeatedly said it has no intention of participating in a ground offensive in Syria since it launched its campaign of air strikes on September 30.

“ISIS are a very mobile gathering of rabble”, Bondarev said of the Islamic State fighters.

A Russian deputy foreign minister said earlier this week that Moscow is aiming to host a round of talks between Syrian officials and opposition leaders next week.

If they are on opposite sides in this aspect of the conflict, the U.S. and Russian Federation are at one in their opposition to IS and its ruthless drive to extend its power over the region and wider. Moscow’s joint operations aim only to secure a defendable remnant state in eastern Syria and gain leverage in any diplomatic settlement.

Thus, Russian support has strengthened Iran’s position in Syria in the short term, but if Iran does not take advantage of the situation that strength could wane over the long term, as Russia support softens. Al-Bayoush said he sent home 130 fighters who had been undergoing training because if a missile hit their training camp, “there would be a massacre”.

Morek has changed hands several times in the conflict, with government troops last retaking it in October of previous year. But while a few strikes have targeted IS forces, more often they have battered rebels factions that are rivals of IS and seem directly meant to help the Syrian military’s offensives.

Chemical weapons experts have determined that mustard gas was used in a Syrian town where Islamic State insurgents were battling another rebel group, according to a report by an worldwide watchdog seen by Reuters.

Russia’s air fleet in Syria comprises 34 fixed-wing aircraft and 16 helicopters, the US officials said.

Lavrov said that Moscow has already shared with its partners on Syria “our list of terrorist organisations” and expects that a new round of talks will come up with a “unified list, so that there are no issues about who is striking whom and who is supporting whom”. The alleged bombing of the Russian airliner over the Sinai would make the provision of surface to air missiles to any group in Syria even more unlikely. It is beyond doubt that these types of reconciliatory efforts are praiseworthy and must be continued, but these efforts would not yield positive results unless both the United States and Russian Federation are ready to stop this war on a practical basis.

This piece first appeared at Middle East Eye.

CIT, led by Ruslan Leviev, has previously worked to uncover information about Russian military deaths in Ukraine.