Aug 31, 2018

In the suddenly announced exercises which will commence tomorrow, September 1st, and last for nearly a week, the the Russian Navy and the Air and Space Forces of Russia are now deployed ‘en masse’  the Mediterranean Sea. Two more submarines and 34 flying vehicles were just deployed.

The vast bulk of the ships to be involved in these ‘drills’ were already sent to the Mediterranean under the widely understood pretext of reinforcing Russian, Iranian, and Syrian forces in Syria in the brewing international diplomatic and military crisis which has emerged over the pending liberation of Idlib from US and Israeli backed forces.

But as Syria’s representative to the UN, Bashar Jaafari presented the UN with data proving plans for terrorist chemical weapons attack in Idlib, the US was able to manipulate the New York based process entirely. This resulted in UN Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura making the ridiculously obfuscatory and misleading statement that ‘both the rebels and the Syrian government are capable of making a chlorine-based chemical weapon attack’.

Nevertheless, de Mistura also urged the Syrian, Russian, and Iranian campaign to liberate Idlib to ‘slow down’. The US is trying to buy time, in order to better equip its Al Qaeda assets in Idlib, and better prepare the diplomatic and geopolitical stage.

Staffan de Mistura incoherently warned Thursday of a “perfect storm” building in northwestern Syria, while expressing special concern for the civilians living in the Idlib area where Syrian forces backed by Russia are expected to liberate the last major terrorist stronghold under foreign control.

“We are worried about any hurried escalation,” de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.

In so doing, Staffan de Mistura has made himself potentially complicit in war crimes, and crimes against humanity, given that the US is attempting to use all the various measures to stall-out the eventual liberation of Idlib.

This is because through these maneuvers which the UN special envoy frames as ‘saving lives’, they only embolden the terrorists, give the US opportunity to resupply them, and this – and only this – will give the terrorists the resolve ‘not’ to surrender, and instead use the entire population as human shields, and will give them the response fire-power to make more destruction and death, all around, inevitable.

De Mistura is turning reality on its head, pushing to create precisely the conditions which will endanger the lives of innocents. The pretext that this will allow more civilians to evacuate is patently false, for these is the absolute reverse of the conditions which allowed civilians to evacuate safely in the past – under conditions in which terrorists themselves were also able to surrender and evacuate.

As a result of de Mistura’s compliance with the US, he has sealed the fate of the civilians being held hostage by the Al Qaeda off-shoot terrorists which presently hold the city.  

It would appear, therefore, consistent with Russian combined diplomatic and military strategy, to extend diplomatic overtures, while simultaneously preparing for the worst-case scenario. As a result, we see the previously understood naval buildup to defend Syria from US-French attack, as a set of apparently unrelated and innocuous ‘drills’.

This mirrors the language and footing of Iranian ‘drills’ taking place in the Strait of Hormuz leading up to the sudden declaration that Iran was suddenly in ‘full control’ of the strategically important strait.

“In total, 26 combat ships and vessels of the Navy, including two submarines, as well as 34 aircraft will take part in the exercise,” Naval commander-in-chief Vladimir Korolyov said to reporters. He noted that the flagship of the grouping is the Marshal Ustinov missile cruiser.

According to the commander-in-chief of the Navy, ships and aircraft will fire artillery, the tasks of anti-submarine warfare and anti-aircraft defense, anti-piracy and rescue of a ship in distress will be worked out.

Joaquin Flores