What’s the deal with Russia and Syria?  Why is Russia so adamant about defending the Assad regime?  It’s a complex issue that has been going on for over 50 years.

First of all Syria is Russia’s last and biggest footprint in the Middle East.  Assad is really a puppet to Putin.  Russia is also in bed with Iran but they don’t run the Mullahs like they do Assad.  Syria is the last standing historical Russian ally left in the region.  Assad knows he owes his survival to Putin.  You can never forget that Putin only cares about his goals; he does not care about atrocities such as Assad using chemical weapons against the rebels.  Putin does not care about the loss of life; it is all about his goals.  I believe President Trump understands this as no other American President has in the last 30 years. http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-russia-20170406-story.html

Recently, so called Russian mercenaries, really soldiers, decided to attack anti-Assad rebels in the south of Syria.  Amongst these rebels were U.S. Special Forces advisors and weapons.  Russian and Syrian forces began to amass troops in preparation to attack the rebel forces.  Of course, the rebels became aware of this and began to prepare themselves.  Russia launched the attack in the first week of February.  The U.S. Special Forces advisors and rebels defended themselves and issued a sound defeat to the Russian/Syrian forces.

No U.S. major news organization carried this and the U.S. government did not publicize this either, but Russian social media did even though the Russian government tried to prevent this from getting out.  Evidently, there were over 500 Russian fatalities and several hundred injured according to random reports leaking out of Russia.  Reports indicated that several Russian military hospitals were filled to capacity with the wounded from this conflict.

Even though both the U.S. and Russia only have “advisors” in Syria clearly these are well equipped advisors.   Putin has been using mercenaries for years which allow him to deny “Russian military” involvement.  There are no Russian generals in charge so to speak, but rather Russian oligarchies that take direction from Putin himself.

Clearly Putin did not like his advisors getting defeated as badly as they did, so it will be interesting to see what happens next.  Will things escalate to a full blown Russian American conflict in Syria or will there be more of the same undercover sparring.  This type of activity can only go on for so long and stay out of the news.  Eventually even the U.S. media will have to report something.

Putin and Russia continue to support murdering ruthless dictators in Kim Jon UN and Assad.  Assad using chemical weapons on his people and Kim Jon UN exporting Korean slave labor to Russia in exchange for weapons and technology.

Putin is no friend to humanity and we can never forget this.