From the time Russia began airstrikes in Syria on September 30, the Ministry of Defense has been a serial producer of videos depicting Moscow’s air campaign against anti-Assad elements.
Whether or not the footage shows what The Kremlin says it does is probably debatable. That is, there’s no way for the public to distinguish between an ISIS training camp and an FSA position in the often grainy clips the MoD posts on YouTube, but one thing is for sure: Russia is conducting a lot of airstrikes in the skies above Syria.
Part of the plan is of course to embarrass the US. Washington has supposedly been flying combat missions against ISIS for some 15 months with little to nothing to show for it in terms of tangible results. That could be because the US has the wrong “strategy” or it could be by design (i.e. Washington might merely be seeking to “contain” ISIS rather than destroy the group and its revenue stream). Whatever the case, Moscow is keen on showing that when it comes to getting serious about fighting terror, nobody does it better than Russia.
Recently, the MoD’s videos have focused increasingly on depictions of airstrikes against Islamic State’s oil infrastructure and crude trucks. The world has woken up to the fact that ISIS pulls in between $500 million and $1 billion per year in revenue from its illicit oil trade and The Kremlin is determined to cut off the funds not only to debilitate ISIS, but also to anger the Turks who Russia insists are involved in the trafficking of stolen oil.
And so, without further ado, we bring you the latest from the Defense Ministry which has released the following two clips depicting a strike on an ISIS training camp in Idlib (note the fleeing soldiers) and the destruction of a column of tanker trucks.