When Russia formally joined the Syrian Civil War, Foreign Affairs Committee head Alexei Pushkov sought to reassure the public that it wouldn’t be a protracted affair, saying the government expected the war against ISIS to last 3-4 months at most.
The comments were seen as aiming to reassure the Russian public, which hasn’t seen a major overseas conflict in decades, that the war would be short and simple. Today, officials are starting to admit that that’s not the case, and that the war is going to be broader in scope and much longer than initial sold to the public.
Officials now say the war, which aims to help the Assad government recover as much territory as possible, will likely last “a year or more,” and is already involving many more airstrikes than anyone really expected.
US officials are furious with Russia, while simultaneously mocking their “doomed” war and the suggestion ISIS could be defeated so quickly. The US, of course, is engaged in materially the exact same war against ISIS, and likewise presented the conflict as a relatively straightforward one when they launched it, over a year ago, only to find they’ve made no real progress in either Iraq or Syria.
In both the US and Russian cases, it seems unlikely that officials genuinely thought the ISIS war would be so short and easy, but rather figured public objection would be tamped down until the war was already well underway.
USG is not going to escalate its bombing campaign against Isis, nor is the Turkish Erdogan regime nor is NATO new figuring or Angela Markel or that Swedish King are prepared for one day bombardment of Isis. Russia is engaged and doing something about these created, feed and dressed, supplied with arms and encouraged by Turkish Erdogan regime and those who support the Saudis barbarians to prolong the war as long as they can. Look: non of these regimes or head of states or kings are from or have any respect for democracy with principals, they all are looking for Islamization of Syria, Iraq, Jordan and if they could Iran with Saudis and barbarians style. They all have a mindset for regime change in Syria no matter the human life or economic costs, after all it is not them that would pay for the damages and humanity disaster that they created, in the end it is the Iraqi and Syrian people that are paying the western democracy, a falsified concept of falsification itself.
First "3 – 4 months at most" then "a year or more"! Famous last words! How many times have we heard US officials making such predictions? Have they ever been right? It always takes one more offensive, one more surge, then it'll all be over and the "boys" can come home in triumph! Putin has painted himself into another corner, just as in Ukraine. Either he abandons Assad and the naval base or he bogs himself down in an unending guerilla war. Indeed, he's made the same mistake as in Ukraine: he's panicked and gone charging in when he should have sat tight and awaited developments. A typical European populist, the little policeman lacks political savvy and merely struts up and down thumbing his nose at people and things he doesn't like.
You appear to be absolutely obsessed with Vladimir Putin. Several times a day it seems you must write some insulting monologue with the aforementioned russian president as the target. You must have written hundreds of comments on this site alone in the last few months and Putin is featured in almost every single one, I put it to you that this is not even vaguely normal behaviour. At first I just assumed that you were just a very repetitive neo-con shill, more recently I have begun to wonder if you are instead some sort of frustrated closet-homosexual online stalker.
Let us first agree to present the information accurately.
1. "When Russia formally joined the Syrian Civil War"
Those who began the demonstrations have long since joined with the elected government in Damascus. What we have is not a civil war but a foreign funded and manned armed insurrection against the government. For those who have been seeking a definition of terrorism, this is it. This is not the action of patriots fighting for their country, but mercenaries acting for a foreign nation.
2."The US, of course, is engaged in materially the exact same war against ISIS"
No it is not. The US divides its mercenaries in two groups, one it calls ISIS and uses as the excuse to be in Syria, and the other it calls by different names at different times which it hopes to install as its puppet government, and to prop up militarily against the wishes of the Syrians ( as in Ukraine).
3. The covert/overt US action began " over a year ago".
It makes one wonder how it is possible for Russia to have so many targets to attack day after day if the US has been bombing ISIS for over a year. There really should be nothing left to bomb. The US is the air force of ISIS/rebel groups. It is not fighting terrorism. It is the frightening face of terrorism.
Numbers are telling in this.
Right now the Russians have about 28 bombers of three kinds. They say they are doing about 50 sorties per day. That is two missions for every aircraft every day. That is about as much as aircraft can do over a period of weeks. It is a bit high, actually.
When they talk of having done 100 in a day, that is about 4 per aircraft that day. That is an intense surge for aircraft. It is about what the Israelis did on the most demanding days of their worst wars. Nobody can keep that up.
Talk of 300 per day? Nonsense. Unless.
Unless they plan to put in a lot more aircraft. Six times more than the current 50/day would require about six times more aircraft, and six times more ground crew, maybe more to handle all the bombs and fuel of such a large force.
What we are hearing from the Russians about what they do or mean to do does not add up.
I'm not doing some sort of conspiracy theory, Russians-are-coming stuff here. I don't know what they will do. It may be just talk about more strikes. It may be pure nonsense, propaganda, a not-unknown thing in wars.
"In both the US and Russian cases, it seems unlikely that officials…"
Russia holds the high water in morality, Empire USA is evil most criminal, so to say that they are the same in any way, shape or form, this creates a mental blindness that the public can in no way comprehend.