How New Russian Equipment Is Helping Turn The Tide In The Syrian War

Russian warplanes fly in the sky over the Mediterranean coastal city of Latakia, Syria

Robert Fisk, The Independent: Syria civil war: State-of-the-art technology gives President Assad’s army the edge

The regime has lost over 60,000 men since the war began, but new Russian equipment is helping turn the tide

You can see the Syrian army’s spanking new Russian T-90 tanks lined up in their new desert livery scarcely 100 miles from Isis’s Syrian “capital” of Raqqa.

There are new Russian-made trucks alongside them, and a lot of artillery and – surely Isis’s spies are supposed to see this – plenty of Syrian soldiers walking beside the perimeter wire beside Russian soldiers wearing floppy military hats against the sun, the kind they used in the old days in the summer heat of Afghanistan in the 1980s. There’s even a Russian general based at the Isriyah military base, making sure that Syrian tank crews receive the most efficient training on the T-90s.

No, Russian ground troops are not going to fight Isis. That was never the intention. The Russian air force attacks Isis from the air; the Syrians, the Iranians, the Afghan Shia Muslims from north-eastern Afghanistan, the Iraqi Shias and several hundred Pakistani Shias must attack Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra on the ground.

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WNU Editor: Another interesting Robert Fisk report on the Syrian conflict is the following .... Syria civil war: On the front line with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards battling outside Aleppo (The Independent).