About the failed attempt by the Jihadi coalition to grab/eliminate the Russian MP personal in northern Hama provience

Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
20 September at 09:12 ·
#Syria #Russia

Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff Colonel General Sergei #Rudskoy held a briefing for media representatives

Despite agreements, which had been signed on September 15 in #Astana, #Jabhat_al_Nusra insurgents jointly with illegal armed groups unwilling to observe ceasefire regime terms launched a large-scale offensive on positions of the government troops located to the north and northeast from #Hama in the #Idlib de-escalation zone at 8 a.m. on September 19.

Offensive was supported by tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Before the offensive, insurgents carried out firepower preparation.

For 24 hours, insurgents managed to dent the government troops’ defence line for up to 12 kilometers deep and up to 20 kilometers wide.

According to the received data, this offensive was initiated by the US special agencies in order to stop successful advance of the Syrian Arab Army to the east from #Deir_ez_Zor.

Seizing of a unit of the Russian Military Police was one of the main aims of insurgents. The Russian MP unit was operating in an observation post deployed as de-escalation observation forces.

As a result, the MP platoon (29 persons) was blocked by insurgents. During several hours, the Russian unit jointly with a detachment of the Muali tribe was repelling attacks of superior enemy’s forces. Earlier, the tribe had signed the ceasefire agreement, and its representatives remained faithful to it in this complicated situation.

Commander of the Russian force grouping in Syria Colonel General Sergei Surovikin formed an unblocking group. Units of Special Operations Forces and Military Police staffed with natives from North Caucasus as well as Syrian special forces.

The unblocking unit was headed by Deputy Chief of the Russian Reconciliation Centre, Hero of Russia, Major General Shulyak Viktor.

Aircraft were delivering strikes on terrorists. Actions of the unblocking unit was supported by a pair of Su-25 aircraft by conducting strikes on manpower and objects of insurgents from extremely low altitudes.

The encirclement has been breached. Units of the Russian Armed Forces have reached locations of SAA without losses.

Three servicemen of the Special Operations Forces have been wounded.

All participants of this unique operation were put forward for state decorations.

The terrorists’ offensive has been stopped by measures taken by the Russian command staff and Syrian General Staff. Terrorists have suffered significant losses.

For the last 24 hours, aviation and artillery units have eliminated 187 objects, 850 terrorists, 11 tanks, four IFVs, 46 pickups, five mortars, 20 trucks, and 38 ammunition storages.

Units of the 5th Airborne Assault Corpse launched a counter-attack and almost took lost positions.
Counterterrorism operation is to be continued.

https://www.facebook.com/mod.mil.rus/photos/a.1492313031011448.1073741828.1492252324350852/1984222885153791/?type=3&theater

Vesti report on that Jihadi attack

Syrian forces have completed the takeover of the entire Euphrates banks north of DEZ and linking up with the forcs north. This was mandatory to prevent the Jihadi coalition on the other side from shipping the radical jihadis to the western side of the Euphrates and make it harder for the Syrian/allied forces to clear the area. Now its another big cauldron which is likely to be purged in the next 1-3 weeks.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKehhVtU8AI2rrt.jpg: orig

Couple of articles worth reading. The below one tells us that diplomatic options are not exhausted citing the reasons why the earlier deal fell off.

A brief history of the huge mess in North Korea
BY JOSHUA POLLACK

President Trump set the tone for North Korea policy last Wednesday on Twitter, as he is wont to do, declaring that America “has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” Spoiler alert: This tweet didn’t stop Kim Jong Un from appearing with a hydrogen bomb before North Korea conducted its biggest nuclear test by far.

Although Secretary of Defense James Mattis was quick to inject that “we’re never out of diplomatic solutions,” Trump’s position didn’t arrive out of the blue. It echoed comments that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered back in March, as the administration’s North Korea policy review was coming to a close: “America has provided $1.3 billion in assistance to North Korea since 1995. In return, North Korea has detonated nuclear weapons, and dramatically increased its launches of ballistic missiles to threaten America and our allies.”

Let’s pause to consider just how wrong these statements are. The point isn’t to indulge in contrarianism, but to understand why policy on North Korea has been such a disaster. The reasons go beyond the almost comprehensively broken policy-making and communications of the new administration.

Indeed, the self-inflicted wounds started under George W. Bush, and it was during the Obama years that Washington enshrined its paralysis as a principle.

The record of American-North Korean diplomacy, and U.S. aid to North Korea, began in earnest in 1994, when the Clinton administration concluded a bargain called the “Agreed Framework.” North Korea mothballed its single plutonium-production reactor at Yongbyon and suspended the construction of two larger ones. Along with partners in an international consortium, the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with new light-water reactors for electricity production. In the meantime, Washington supplied North Korea with shipments of heavy fuel oil. Humanitarian food aid started flowing in 1996.

The Agreed Framework was a product of crisis diplomacy, just four pages long. It was effective but hardly all-inclusive. It said nothing about missiles, for example. So when North Korea attempted to launch a satellite eastward over Japan in August 1998, it didn’t break the deal, but it did put it under stress. The Clinton administration’s response was to press Pyongyang for a moratorium on further space launches and missile tests. Perhaps because North Korea was still emerging from a famine at the time, it accepted the new restriction.

The next major challenge to the Agreed Framework, in the fall of 2002, was its end. Having discovered that North Korea was working on enriching uranium — an activity not explicitly forbidden in the 1994 deal — the George W. Bush administration washed its hands of the entire mess.

It’s unclear whether Pyongyang could have been squeezed into compliance with another demand, but Washington didn’t try. Instead, oil shipments and reactor-building activity ceased. North Korea responded by restarting the Yongbyon reactor and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, making it the only country to have done so.

In the administration’s second term, some Bush officials seemed to realize the costs of standing aloof, but the administration was riven by disputes about how to proceed. On one hand, it tried to negotiate a new agreement in the “Six-Party Talks” sponsored by China. On the other hand, it tried to squeeze North Korea as hard as possible, ending food aid and using financial measures to cut the regime off from funds it held overseas. In 2006, according to a detailed report from the Congressional Research Service, U.S. aid to North Korea fell to nothing for the first time since 1994.

Pyongyang’s response was to resume testing ballistic missiles, and then to test its first nuclear device.

By the next year, it appeared that the sides had peered over the brink and decided on a rethink. In 2007, Six-Party Talks yielded two “action plans” that more or less reconstituted the Agreed Framework in a new guise, including renewed fuel oil shipments. Facilities at Yongbyon, including the plutonium-production reactor, underwent forms of “disablement” to ensure they could not be rapidly returned to use.

But in August 2008, talks stumbled over disagreements on what verification activities would be permitted at nuclear facilities. The United States provided its last shipment of oil that December. Food aid, which had resumed in 2008, concluded in 2009.

Since then, there has also been no virtually no aid of any sort. Of course, there have been another five nuclear tests, plus multiple space launches and dozens of missile tests. Talks were tentatively tried again in 2011, leading to parallel announcements of a freeze on nuclear and missile activities in February 2012. But as soon as the North Koreans announced plans for a space launch, the United States pulled back, calling Pyongyang unreliable.

There’s a lot of truth to the view that North Korea is slippery, exploiting every loophole and pushing every boundary. Facing this sort of behavior, the United States has always had a choice: to press our demands on the North Koreans, as we did after the 1998 space launch and the first nuclear test in 2006, or to give up on any chance at reining them in, as we did in October 2002 and March 2012.

The results of these choices speak for themselves. In honor of the Fourth of July this year, North Korea conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Last weekend, it followed up with a nuclear test with an explosive yield in the hundreds of kilotons, roughly comparable to weapons in the American, Russian, Chinese, French and British arsenals.

Nothing of the sort took place during the much-derided years of talks and aid, 1995-2002 and 2007-2008. Americans are justified in asking our leaders if this outcome was really preferable to sending oil and food to North Korea in exchange for no nuclear or missile tests. Just don’t expect any good answers from the tweeter-in-chief.

Pollack is a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and editor of the Nonproliferation Review.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/history-huge-mess-north-korea-article-1.3473814

Also,

I’m a nuclear weapons expert. Trump’s presidency is my personal nightmare.
By Jeffrey Lewis
Jeffrey Lewis is a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

My greatest fear is a reality: A lunatic has gained control of nuclear-armed missiles that could reach halfway around the globe. And, to make matters worse, Kim Jong Un has them, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/23/im-a-nuclear-weapons-expert-trumps-presidency-is-my-personal-nightmare/

Jihadi coalition is making use of the Tabqa dam and the upstreams which is under their control to slow down the advance of the Syrian forces. They have been flooding the Euphrates ever since the Syrian/Russia/allies started crossing the Euphrates.

Russian top brass calls on US to not hamper Damascus’ fight against terrorism
Military & Defense September 19, 17:49 UTC+3

The fiercest attacks on the Syrian Army have been coming from an area where opposition units and US forces are situated

MOSCOW, September 19. /TASS/. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov has called on the US-led international coalition and the opposition supported by it not to hamper the actions of the Syrian government forces against terrorists.

“The closer the end of the ISIS (the former name of the Islamic State, a terror organization outlawed in Russia – TASS) in Syria, the more clear it is who is really fighting with the ISIS and who has been imitating this fight for three years. So, if the US-led international coalition does not want to fight against terrorism in Syria, let it just be out of the way of those who are doing it continuously and effectively,” he said.

“According to the reports that the Syrian commanders have been sending from the frontline, most serious counter-attacks and mass shelling on the Syrian troops come from the north,” he said. “It is the area where units of the Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as the US special operations units, are deployed, who, according to CNN, are providing medical aid to these militants instead of participating in the operation to liberate Raqqa,” Konashenkov said.

Konashenkov noted that the assault troops of the Syrian government forces, supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces, forced the Euphrates and continued extending the established lodgement to the east from Deir ez-Zor. Despite the stiff resistance offered by the Islamic State militants, the forces managed to free more than 60 square kilometers from terrorists on the left riverside.

“In the past 24 hours, assault troops of the Syrian government army backed by the Russia aerospace force crossed the Euphrates and continues to expand the stronghold east of Deir ez-Zor. Despite tough resistance of Islamic State militants, an area of more than 60 square kilometers on the Euphrates left bank has been liberated,” he said.

Water discharges

Water discharges from the Euphrates dams controlled by the US-backed opposition hamper the advance of Syrian government troops near Deir ez-Zor, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Tuesday.

“Thus, the water situation on the Euphrates has deteriorated dramatically in the past 24 hours. As soon as the Syrian government troops began to cross the river, water level in the Euphrates rose within hours and the current velocity nearly doubled to two meters per second,” he said.

“Since there have been no rains, the only source of such changes in the water situation is man-induced water discharge at dams upstream the Euphrates. These facilities are held by opposition groups controlled by the US-led coalition,” he stressed.

http://tass.com/defense/966370

VKS gunships in action over Hama (?)

Few snaps from Rus MoD gallery of the international journos tour to the airbase
http://мультимедиа.минобороны.рф/multimedia/photo/gallery.htm?id=44968@cmsPhotoGallery

One of the guys we saw, in the videos, running after every aircraft landing at the airbase. I wonder if there are any airbase cats around.

It probably was an operational launch of Hwasong-12

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ0orlcV4AAx8IX.jpg: orig

The areas around DEZ airbase is slowly getting secured.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ1jE0xWAAMClt7.jpg: orig

The southern border with Iraq has seen a renewed operation to reach the Euphrates, where as the Iraqi’s have started their own operation along the Syrian border, most likely, to the displeasure of the muricans.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJ4DUTAXUAAnKMJ.jpg: orig

Its would be good to take into account that that the current Syrian/allies operation do not have much of a VKS air support (after all what can 2 dozen aircrafts do 24/7?) as the active front lines are dispersed across Syria. There is every possibility of the Jihadi coalition using their aircrafts to strike at Syrian/allies advance considering there is not much of any credible air-defence in the area(s) and no fighters available to counter (more like not having the stomach to put up a fight, coz lacking combat assets) the Jihadi aircrafts. It remains to be seen how much security VKS can provide to the Syrian/allies advance across the Euphrates in the face of jihadi coalition airpower.

The tanks in very low level flight after breaking the siege on Deir Ez Zor….