War

The US government’s claim of killing thousands of terrorists in the fight against ISIS is the “stuff of fairy tales” and far removed from reality, according to former American diplomat, J. Michael Springmann. Springmann, who had been a high-ranking US diplomat in Saudi Arabia, made his remarks after a senior American military official said that the US-led coalition conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria had killed terrorists in the two countries since 2014.

Submitted by Wayne Madsen via Strategic-Culture.org,

Thousands of ISIS militants have recaptured the key Syrian city of Palmyra, according to Russian military sources who say that the Pentagon are doing nothing to help. 4,000 Islamic State terorrists launched an assault on the ancient city, reinforced by tanks and heavy military hardware. “IS has dispatched a considerable force to Palmyra from the area of Raqqa, where militants, backed by the US and the international coalition ceased combat action against the terrorists this week,” a Russian military source says.

In a first of its kind event, Russian television today showed what it says is the first footage of Russian special forces fighting on the ground in Syria. 

Elite Russian units in Syria take part in search and rescue operations, assassinations of key rebel figures and coordination of air strikes, according to footage broadcast on state-owned channel Rossiya 24 on Sunday. Groups of heavily armed soldiers were shown coordinating sniper attacks, using robotic tanks and inspecting rebel corpses.

Just as the Assad regime (with Russian support) is about to retake Aleppo in a critical offensive, one which would shift the momentum of the nearly 6-year-long Syrian proxy war entirely to the benefit of the country's ruling regime, something unexpected happened: one day after the US announced it would send another 200 ground troops to Syria, and two days after  Obama unexpectedly lifted a ban restricting the delivery of military aid to “foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals,” Islamic State jihadists successfully recaptured the ancient desert city of Palmyra, after a much