Image: aa.com.tr
On February 14, the Ministry of Defense of Russia condemned supposed Turkish claims on Syrian military losses as a result of Turkish strikes in Syria’s Greater Idlib.
In an official statement, the Russian MoD said that Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense said that 62 Syrian service members were neutralized in Turkish strikes.
“[The Turkish] Statements about the shelling of Syrian government forces by units of the Turkish armed forces, and, especially, the death of Syrian troops as a result of them, are false,” the statement reads.
In fact, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense didn’t said that its strikes caused the alleged SAA losses. In the aforementioned, the ministry emphasized that “various sources in the Idlib region” were behind these claims.
İdlib bölgesinde çeşitli kaynaklardan alınan son bilgilere göre; 63 Rejim unsurunun etkisiz hale getirildiği öğrenilmiştir.
— T.C. Millî Savunma Bakanlığı (@tcsavunma) February 14, 2020
Google translation: According to the latest information from various sources in the Idlib region; It has been learned that 63 regime elements have been neutralized.
Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense began releasing information on SAA losses in Greater Idlib earlier in February, following two attacks on Turkish troops in the region. The attacks, which were carried out by the Syrian military, killed 14 Turkish service members and injured dozens others.
The information shared by the Turkish defense ministry are often exaggerated or completely false. This explains why the Russian MoD released the statement on the matter. In own turn, the Russian media campaign in Syria also has own flaws that have been repeatedly surfaced since 2015. Most of these ‘flaws’ and ‘mistakes’, as the one on February 14, were a result of negligence or lack of attention to details by low and middle-level officials involved in the coverage of events in Syria. MORE HERE
