On December 12, SouthFront announced (here and here) that it will publish the most interesting comments of the project’s readers and subscribers about the fall of Palmyra to ISIS.
The comments below were made following the release of “Syrian War Report – December 12, 2016: Mistakes That Led To Fall Of Palmyra” and provided a wide range of views on the topic.
Here you go:
If somebody does not find his comment in this post, please, don’t be upset. SouthFront is going to continue to post the feedback from the audience to our videos. So, all will have a chance to see own comments in SouthFront’s posts.
i dont remenber seing this
The war in Syria right now is a war between USA_OTAN_Israel (so called ISIS and moderated terrorists) and Russia (Syria army, Iran, Hezbolah). Because Russia has the same adavanced technology as USA in weapons and intelligent, what happened in Palymara can only due to two factors; Either it was a russian tactical stupididy ( in this case the general in charged must be removed), or it was an agreement Lavrov-Kerry (in this case madness are in both sides). In both cases, russian are direct responsible for what is happening in Palmyra.
There ia a similarity between the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad in november 1942 which suffered operation Uranus and the SAA in Palmyra , lack of intelligence and scouting. A question .. Have the SAA brigades their own reconaissance and scouting units? Do you remember the Africa Korps with Rommel flying over the battlefield with a Fieseler Storch for reconaissance? Now we have drones for a close terrain reconnaissance , but in my opinion a local commander needs to know also what is happening in 100 km distance. So a modern version of the “Storch” would be very handy for local commanders. If the russian commanders have forgotten the lessons of operation Uranus , the ISIS commanders had studied it very well.
Seems to me a lot of these posts are quick to blame Russian and Syrian command. It is war and situations change all the time. The geography of Syria is not just desert plains, it is quite varied. There is a serious shortage of resources available to patrol the entire country especially the border areas that are unfriendly (Golan Heights, Jordan and who knows what Turkey is up to and no fault of its own Irag) to confront any attacks that might arise. You cannot just pull resources from Aleppo to defend Palmyra or Aleppo will fall again. ISIS will be confronted when time is right but cleaning up non ISIS territories is top priority so any gains to the east cannot be attacked from behind
The Syrian, and Russian command didn’t fail, and we should not overlook the obvious: Palmyra is of exactly zero strategic significance. Palmyra is only good as bait in a trap, and the trap has been sprung. ISIS doesn’t have the logistical capability to support combat forces in open terrain. The terrorists are fighting with what they have on their backs, and that will sustain them for 3 or 4 days at the most. Shortly they will starve for lack of ammo, food, and water.
Russian intelligence will have seen these clowns traveling across open desert terrain, and they will have been aware of when they coalesced into battle order. Once the terrorists present cohesive battle formations they are lucrative targets for air, and artillery assets. Soon they will cease to exist.
idk. If the airbase will fall to ISIS, then I shall guess SAA and Russia have neglected on fortifying the defense lines prior to the attack.
Palmyra disaster is another indicator of the result of 5 years of war doing attrition on the SAA. Southfront has talked before about how its already a problem with raw recruits ill-equipped and insufficiently trained to handle military equipment.
The United States, still under the Obama administration isn’t letting up on attempting to prevent Trump from getting the Presidency. They are also, like some of the comments said, cynically trying to use the war in Syria to score political points. The eagerness of the presstitutes to jeer at the loss of Palmyra shows the need to diss Russia at every turn.
I would agree Russia would bear some responsibility for what happened in Palmyra, and should have gone for the goal of eliminating the terrorists at the shortest possible time. The longer this drags on, the attrition will not favor the severely under-strength SAA. Hezbollah forces have also shown to be inadequate in experience. And the longer this drags on, it gives the NATO powers more time to make things difficult.