Though the Obama Administration has “warned” Russia against attacking non-ISIS rebels in Syria, the Russian government has insisted that they are following the US example and attacking a list of different terrorist factions. Some of those factions were armed by the CIA, and still nominally are supported by the US.
This has been the source of a lot of US criticism of Russia, but when push comes to shove, most agree that the Obama Administration is unlikely to make any serious effort to try to stop Russia militarily from continuing its air campaign.
Realistically, their options are limited. The “moderate” factions from the era when the US was supporting them have, as Russia noted, in many cases defected to ISIS, and what’s left is a very limited force. Even if the US started pouring more weapons into those factions, it probably wouldn’t significantly change that, which was a big part of why the US abandoned them in the first place.
White House officials are threatening “diplomatic consequences” to Russia if they don’t do what the US wants, but even here the risk is pretty limited for Russia, as those long-forgotten factions aren’t worth anything more than some token statements of disapproval to the US, not worth a serious worsening of US-Russian relations, and certainly not worth a military confrontation.
We must realise that according to the Bush Doctrines Russia and Syria both have every right to consider these persons to be Terrorists, they are in fact fighting the Government of Syria, it should also be realized that the US was the original funder of IS when it was known by another name, and that the US trained the leader in Georgia in 2008 to fight Russia, the US then retrained him to fight Syria in 2011 which by the way is state sponsored Terrorism!
Moderate rebels. What does that even mean?
It's a term analogous to "Respectable Business"
The whole thing is like a really bad Mobster movie, where they get busted for running a sloppy front operation.
Obviously the US isn't going to fight Russia. What 's wanted is that Putin should bog himself down in Syria. Nobody except Putin himself has any interest is seeing him being fought off by US forces! The diplomatic consequences are probably the maintainance of sanctions. That's nothing new but it shows Putin that he's not going to get any concessions on Ukraine by pretending to "help" the US in Syria.
Go ahead and bring on what you have left on your diplomatic arsenal, otherwise stop your nonsense empty talks with no meaning or the sense of the word. USG-Europe economical sanctions toward Russia didn't work now for having said something they come up with diplomatic consequences facing Russia, if your economic embargoes did not and will not work, how can your diplomatic nonsense would work when everyone knows that you are no longer in position to fool people nor able to force people accepting your fake and falsified democracy.
Moderate rebels LOL ROFL
They must think we are all idiots and cannot see through all this Bull—t.
The best part is that if Russia goes after the 'moderate' rebels the US will huff and puff….and do exactly what?
He's not pretending to help the US in Syria. He's criticizing the US while maintaining a smile. He will bomb any faction opposing a Syrian government advance, and he has the tacit approval of the Europeans due to the refugee crisis.
The only remaining question is whether the EU can force the US to stop funding/arming the rebels through its proxies, Turkey, KSA and Qatar..