From Caspian not Mediterranean. Must have flown over Iran and Iraq

Yup, saw it now, my bad. 😉 From the Caspian Sea, so that’d probably narrow it down quite neatly to Kalibr/Klub missiles launched by the Buyan-M class corvettes and the one Kalibr-endowed Gepard class frigate of the Caspian Flotilla.

Fairly interesting.

Frankly, even I could not tell what the “western outlook” really is. Probably a peaceful secular country with the religious groups held in cages so that they don’t bite. And that is what Assad has been doing his whole life. With whatever means necessary, granted. But hey, he needs to be removed. I am just still struggling to learn why. Because Netanyahu can’t stand him? Because Saudis want a pipeline to Southern Europe? Or because he buys MiGs instead of F-16s?

I’d say “he needs to go” because his administration has been directly implied in systematic torture among other things. But, there are a number of problems pertaining to this, some of which are:

1. These things are almost SOP in the Middle East (save for Israel I guess) and they are not objectively assessed by the West. Many “get away with it” in lack of better phrasing, so to speak, and one has to wonder why.
2. The concrete plans to get rid of him predate the so called “Arab Spring”, the protester violence and the accusations of torture, chemical attacks and what not. True, he was known in some circles as being something of a “despot” prior to all of this too, but curiously the general picture painted was rather favorable. This rapidly changed literally over night, curiously…
3. Like him or not, the available “alternatives” are all worse, so if an “improvement” (i.e. maintaining the secular civilization and its liberties, but improving human rights etc) is sought it pretty much has to start from the current Syrian administration, nudging them constructively in the “right direction” etc. Some in the West are reluctantly making some concessions towards this end now, but the civil war has very effectively tarnished Assad in the public eye so it will be difficult to motivate any sort of proper co-operation (Russia doesn’t care much about public opinion in the West though, as we all know)

If I’m not mistaken, several key people such as Ahtisaari have explicitly stated that a comprehensive and by all means constructive deal akin to point #3 was worked out already years ago, but only a few days later came the infamous chemical attacks pinned on Assad so consequently the deal was ditched by the West in favor of continuing to prop up the “moderate” rebellion and hope “for the best”. I quite honestly don’t think they ever intended to consider that deal anyway, given that it’s well documented that they were already half way through with their original plan by then.

So yeah, back to your original question, why were they so adamant about getting rid of Assad in the first place? Anyone’s guess. Regardless, this plan has produced rather legitimate justifications after the fact, but also backfired in all kinds of directions, and we’re rapidly approaching a situation where nothing can be salvaged anymore.

Those things were not dropped from any aircraft, Russian or otherwise.

…
Speculation, speculation, speculation.

I keep hearing that the Russians attacked “mountaineous” areas. The video shows some rather steep hillsides and thus cannot be in or near Talbisah, but quite possibly 10 miles or more north of it where the terrain gets more varied.

I do hope somebody with too much spare time manages to geolocate the drone video. Chances are that the other strikes are in the vicinity, too.

I dag er det bowlingen, men du er nok Svensk likevel.

Hvorfor bruker du propagandametoder som å på forhånd å latterliggjøre poster om sivile offer av bombing. Om du ikke har en investert interesse av å frikjenne Russland på forhånd, kan du i det minste vente å se til meldigene er bekreftet/avkreftet ?

Det handlar inte om att på förhand “frikänna Ryssland” eller något liknande. Det handlar om att vissa specifika propagandamönster på alla sätt och vis är förväntade, så man får ha det i åtanke innan man på förhand anklagar Ryssland för saker och ting (var mycket noga med att lägga märke till att de ursprungliga anklagelserna var förhastade på precis samma sätt som du nu varnar om). Vidare så vore det på alla sätt väldigt märkligt om Ryssland klev in i Syrien enbart för att skaffa sig en massa “badwill” (badwill via urskillningslösa bombangrepp på civila) bland de länder som Ryssland bara för någon enstaka dag sedan försökte åter närma sig diplomatiskt efter en kylig period.

Skepticismen är så att säga inte obefogad.

But, this is an English-language forum and I’m pretty damn sure that I’m gonna get some kind of infraction for this lengthy post in a Scandinavian language that happens to be my mother tongue. Wink wink. I’ll take it anyway, so in a sense I’m making a show out of proving my point here (for everybody to see).

Hvilket land og by er du fra ?

That’s too easy, you could Google Translate your way through a text conversation and some Google-Fu even without speaking the language that well.

Men eftersom du är så nyfiken – jag är 100% svensk och jag kommer från Sollefteå från början. Min norska är inte så där våldsamt bra, men om du håller dig till Skavlan-svorsk så hänger jag med utan bekymmer. 😀 Fast, som sagt, sånt här kan man fejka tämligen enkelt så mitt erbjudande kvarstår (angående Skype, det vill säga).

From everything to your pleasing profile photo to the way you word yourself, you have the stink of FSB about you.

…and then comes that. High-five! 😀 In a somewhat ironical way, the oftentimes rather contrived paranoia about Russian trolls has spawned a “movement” (and recurring knee-jerk reactions) of sorts that definitely rivals the Russobots, perhaps even excels them in some select contexts.

Anyway, why would the FSB be interested in this? That’s a domestic bureau as far as I know (somewhat analogue to the FBI), and as such, part of the MVD. “Foreign” things (intelligence, counter-intelligence, psy-ops and what not) are handled chiefly by the GRU and SVR, if I’m not entirely mistaken. There are possibly other, more shadowy organizations too. I wouldn’t know, I’m no expert on it.

Regarding “my” photo, I’ve always had a soft spot for green eyed brunettes. I actually used to have another one (avatar, that is), and a way more famous one at that – Amy Lee, but I found this Czech (as far as I recall) model somewhere by accident and found her smile rather contagious. I like to spread some smiles and unfortunately, my own isn’t nearly as radiant. 😀

So, to cut back to the Syrian affair (shall we?), do you dispute what has been said? I mean, I for one think it’s obvious that this Russian involvement came as a surprise that nobody really anticipated (I suppose that’s part of the Russian plan) and as such is rather undesireable, and that’s definitely gonna have an effect on the (dis)information flow.

So, while I personally think that the notion of the Russian Air Force striking only 100% legit IS targets and in the process not harming a single civilian is absolutely ludicrous (hello?), I also have the (apparent) audacity to claim that the RuAF won’t be targeting civilians for the fun of it, and that there’s gonna be a whole lot of utter BS to sieve through about that very thing in the days/weeks/months to come.

Russia launches airstrikes in Syria, says targeting IS

Russia Bombs Syria, 27 Killed

Russian air strikes hit Syrian opposition, not IS group: US official

Russia really must be something. Seems like the rest of the world has been trying real hard to find these (by now almost mythological) moderate rebels for years, Russia went in and pounced right on them on their very first try. 😉

Apropos – I’ll second what TR1 wrote in #333. Fascinating how predictable it all is.