Russia and Syria preparing to fight US Marines as Trump-ISIS partnership blossoms

Washington is set to host a ministerial meeting of 68 US-led coalition nations fighting against Daesh (Islamic State/ ISIS) on March 22-23.
However two key players in the region actively fighting against the jihadists, Russia and Iran, have not been invited to the gathering because, according to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, “they’re not part of the global coalition.”

Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov commented that it is quite possible to discuss the fight against Daesh without Russia’s participation, but it is impossible to defeat them without Russia.

Meanwhile, Semyon Bagdasarov, Head of the Center for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies suggested that Russia has not been invited in order to show that it does not play any role in the fight against the terrorists, however this is far from true, to put it mildly. In his interview with Russia’s online newspaper Vzglyad he suggested that this is part of the information against Russia, and it is set to continue in the future.

The political analyst also said that there are military operations currently being planned to liberate Mosul and Raqqa. If these offensives are successful, he suggested, the members of the coalition will claim all the success to themselves and will blame Russia for not doing enough in the fight.

The real aim, he then said, is not to “share the victory.” Trump, he said, is a tougher leader than Barack Obama hence he won’t make any concessions in the sharing of the victory.

Meanwhile, Evgeny Satanovsky, head of the Moscow-based Middle East Institute said that there are countries within the US-led coalition which are actually supporting the terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

“What anti-terrorist coalition can there be which includes Saudi Arabia and Qatar, when the first is financing al-Qaeda and the second – the Islamic State? What anti-terrorist fight could they be talking about sitting in the same very room with the sponsors of the terrorists, pretending that nobody understands and notices it?” he questioned.

He further recalled that these particular countries have been sending their money until the terrorists grew to such a number that Russia had to fly to Syria to fight with them. The expert however added that, nevertheless, Washington is cooperating with Russia in Syria, recalling the recent meeting of Russian, Turkish and US military chiefs in Antalya.

On March 7, Turkey’s military chief of staff, General Hulusi Akar, was hosting a meeting with the heads of the US and Russian armed forces in the southern Turkish province of Antalya to discuss the Syrian conflict, among others.

“Why should Trump reveal that the US is cooperating with Russia? They have already been claiming that he, with the help of our hackers and our money has been elected president. Hence it would be suicide to initiate any official negotiations with Russia in the political arena,” he said, adding that meanwhile, the military of the two countries continue “cooperating closely and fruitfully.”