Are U.S. Missiles Taking Out Russian Military Officials?

Are U.S. Missiles Taking Out Russian Military Officials?

... Excerpt

 

Evidence has emerged strongly suggesting that U.S.-armed rebels have used an American-supplied weapons system to kill a handful of senior Russian military officials in Syria.

 

 

 

 

Video footage, circulated by a known CIA-backed Free Syrian Army militia, shows a laser-guided BGM-71 TOWs anti-tank missile fired at a rooftop where unidentified uniformed personnel had gathered. The location of the building under attack is likely Latakia province, where the rebels have lately suffered setbacks as a result of intensified Russian airstrikes and artillery shelling aiding forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

 

Everything is based on open-source intelligence and reporting from Syrian opposition, Turkish, and Russian sources, all of which agree that at least one high-ranking Russian was killed in action in Syria. As of Thursday evening, U.S. officials would neither confirm nor deny to The Daily Beast whether an increase in resupplies to U.S.-backed rebel militias was in the offing as a result of the complete and utter breakdown of Syrian peace negotiations in Geneva.

 

But if the FSA is indeed taking out Russian commanders with American materiel, then two former Cold War adversaries would find themselves in a miniature replay of the Soviet-Afghan proxy war—exactly the sort of geopolitical brinkmanship that President Obama has repeatedly forsworn. More significantly, such a contingency could derail any creeping efforts at diplomatic reconciliation between Washington and Moscow after a severe breakdown of relations following Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine in 2014.

 

On Wednesday, the FSA’s Northern Division, one of the 39 anti-Assad militias backed by the CIA, uploaded a video showing one of its soldiers firing a TOW missile at half a dozen or so unidentified uniformed men gathered on a rooftop of a building. The video, uploaded at 5:57 GMT, named the targets as Russian officers but gave no details about the exact location of the attack apart from noting that it was somewhere near Syria’s coast—the region of the country where Russia has recently constructed forward operating bases and airfields. There was little doubt that whoever was on that roof didn’t survive the resulting blast.

 

About an hour later, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported that a Russian officer who had been advising the Assad’s army had indeed been killed in Syria—not by U.S.-backed rebels but by ISIS, which allegedly hit a military garrison with mortars on Monday. No location for this attack was given.

 

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