Illustrative image
Turkey has resumed its weapon supplies to “mainstream Syrian rebels” to help them fend off the ongoing Syrian Arab Army (SAA) military operation in northern Hama, the Reuters news agency revealed in a report on May 25.
According to the news agency, Turkey is supplied the militants with dozens of armored vehicles, Grad rocket launchers and anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), including US-made TOW.
“In doing so [resuming weapons supplies] Turkey signaled its readiness to preserve its influence in northwestern Syria, where it has beefed up its troop presence in a dozen military bases that were set up under a de-escalation deal with Russia,” the agency quoted a senior rebel commander as saying.
The SAA launched its limited military operation in the northern Hama countryside earlier this month with direct support from Russia, whose Aerospace Forces are providing close air support to SAA units.
A Western intelligence source told Reuters that Washington had given a “greenlight” for Turkish-backed militants to use TOW ATGMs in order to repel the SAA operation.
Turkish-backed militants are supporting the former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), effectively helping it to maintain its presence in northwestern Syria. This raises serious questions about the real motives behind the Turkish support for these militants.
As expected. No comment needed. All are stupid there.
All insist in winning and loosing in stead of any soulutions. Syria need someone removing Assads and after that make Turks to buzz of.
Assad is the future of Syria. Deal with it.
speechless ridicolous pathetic the official Scenario is not believable any more
Turks will be Turks; if you expected any different then the joke is on you. Rather, what happened to “equal-opportunity terror fighter” Russia who now humors these very same groups as “political opposition”. At least, they’ve done so for most of past year; if they now start to learn from the consequences, then better late than never I guess.
Green light some destruction in Turkey. Only way to stop this imo
The supply of weapons to US proxies in Syria to butcher brothers by brothers. Is their any worst example of madness exist than this. What job US intelligence cannot do to destroy and butcher Syrian nation to take Syria. The same job a Muslim state does for them. Note this and keep it safe that after Syria the next number is of Turkey because Turkey has no effective defence from America.
(stolen) Money for nothing. It goes like it comes, for nothing. Erdo, you are what?
Reuters? Ha ha ha!
Turkey will not get Syria and Syrians if Turkey does this madness. The chances of America are higher to take Syria.
If Turkey and Syria come together and expel US forces then its possible for Turkey to take Syria and its nation by supplying Turkish national identity cards to all Syrians.
And why would “…Turkey to take Syria and its nation by supplying Turkish national identity cards to all Syrians.”?
Because both are Muslim states. Jews want to divide countries to combat and make them weaker but true leaders make them united to built one super power free from US influence. Why do you have any objection?
Not at all however I wonder why Syrians would have to get Turkish national identity cards? They can be united yet keep their national identities.
Cancel s-400 Sale to Erdogan his bias and collaborating with terrorists. Erdogan actually violating fundamental Astana secret agreement. As long as Erdogan backstab and kill Syria soldiers it will delay Syrian liberation.
and who saved the terrorist and send them to idlip?
After Russian jet was down and Erdogan made fake peace with Putin.Putin just started to do what ever Erdogan wants to please him.First of all Turkey was not permitted or allow to enter Syria.Putin useless meetings in Astana brought and legalise Turkish troops in Syria.Erdogan hijacked the relocation of surrender terrorist’s to Idlib by Russian reconciliation centre for future terrorism against Assad.Of course Russia created this shit and have to rectify it.Erdogan uses S-400 deal to let Putin dance to his tone or else Erdogan will shut down phophorus strait to Russian ships.
been a person of limited intelligence, show in all your posts. putin does what he does with turkey trying not only to break her away from nato but also because of the bosporus passage as well because he is building a gas pipe line via turkey. It is called russians national interest. Few other reasons exist as well, but I think those will be beyond your comprehension and waste of my time.
To make all the scum be in the same place at the same time.
In total, it is estimated that there were 17,000 of them, now there are 16,000 of them – tick tock. SAA is taking casualties, but nowhere near the amount that would occur, if they were still roaming all over Syria.
It will all come good, more terrorist infighting on the way – keep the faith and stop moaning (in a nice way, no offence intended).
Turkey is a NATO state…they can have strong economic ties with Russia…but Turks are subordinates to the orders of NATO!…the proof is that Turkish warships are active in black sea naval drills with US navy and others western countries…
They are subordinated to money.
Never understood why S-400s would be sold to NATO countries in order to study how to counteract them.
but not the Nebo-M radar that detects and tracks stealth!
That’s good! I just don’t believe anything good comes of giving ANYTHING of value to the terrorist promoting organization known as NATO and it’s controllers.
Export variant-models are not the same as the domestic models, exports are built to a market price and minus most sensitive new developments. Back in the day, the Soviet hardware sold or passed to client states was not the equivalent of the Soviet state’s own models – and nothing has changed – all advanced hardware exporting states do this.
True, but there surely must be some advantage to NATO states purchasing even the export models, otherwise, why would they be interested in the first place. I view Russia’s advanced weapons systems as the ONLY thing maintaining the MAD principle and keeping us from a 3rd WW desired by the psychopaths running the Empire.
The US already has access to older late 1990’s S-300 systems that NATO member Greece owns and operates in Crete – these were purchased by Greek Cyprus but removed, and exchanged for various Greek weapons, after Turkey threatened war over S-300 presence. Israel has also trained against this Greek owned system. US also has access to even older early 1990’s S-300 system components that Ukraine has shipped to US mainland for evaluation over last two years. But these are very old export variants from 1990’s – when Russia was not in great shape to invest in upgrading and developing weapons systems – so these particular S-300 systems that US evaluate are really not that much different to late 1980’s export models. The sale of current advanced S-400’s to Turkey actually offers Russia some technology advantages – if NATO F-35’s operate from Turkish NATO bases they will provide S-400 radars with a great deal of information that can be networked back to Russian technicians by variety of means.
And the advantage to NATO countries in purchasing advanced Russian weapons, even if they’re export models, is….?
That is a decision for Russian leadership – they want to sell and export advanced systems to clients – this creates dependence relationships, alters power balances, and creates market share for ongoing legacy sales. They are more than aware of which sensitive technologies to keep as domestic only and legislate accordingly. Modern advanced weapons systems are engineering marvels – but they are also production lines of great expense and export variants are one means to alleviate the in-house costs. Once a system is out in the wild, political events can alter and the system can fall into wrong hands – but this is hardly news to governments – and likewise Russia has recent experience of their 1990’s S-300 SAMs sold to Greek Cyprus being evaluated by all of NATO and Israel too boot. Russian leadership will certainly factor all of this into the specifications of the export variants.
The S300’s that NATO evaluated is an old version no longer relevant. My question is simply, if Russians don’t include any advanced technology (as you stated regarding export versions) that NATO would like to check out, why would NATO purchase it. I understand reasons for selling. I have lifelong experience in electronics, mechanics, computing and software, so I’m fully aware of the complexities involved. I just don’t understand why NATO would desire new Russian weapons which provide them access to technology they already are familiar with, i.e. nothing new in the export version, unless of course it’s Russian advancements that are minimal as far as Russia is concerned. The only reason I can think of for selling to NATO ally Turkey is political gain, whereby not too much access to modern tech is compromised and is overshadowed by the political gains.
Never understood why S-400s would be sold to NATO member states to study counteracting them.
i actually think they want more land!
With NATO Turkey clearing up the old ’50s NATO contact line of mines between 2007-2010 at the Syrian border already indicated a preparation for NATO invasion. Since then the flow of terrorist and weapons crossing into Syria from Turkey was of the richter. all Aleppo industrial hardware that was looted dissapeared into Turkey. Without the help of the sultan the Jay al Fateh terrorist coaltion could not have archieved their succes in overrunn Idlib in summer 2015. We will not forget the immense effort Turkey invested to gain a no fly zone above its NATO proxies at the time. With SAA lifting the siege on nubl and zaraa in 2016 and so cutting off terrorist supply lines from Turkey/Azaz into idlib we see same terrorist being reallocated by Turkey from Aleppo/hasakah into Idlib being albe to move freely thru Turkey. Sooner or later the terrorist card will sting the sultan back as he seems to be unable to give the support needed for his mercenaries to maintain their presence as an occupation force and this all under the eye of Russia who controls the battefield leading Damascus to victory.
russia is not supporting SAA get your facts straight. They just used their airforce against what attack them in their airport, but do not support the SAA against the turks. Get your facts straight.
I would not be so sure. Do you think Putin has forgotten the Turkish downing of a Russian fighter?
“A Western intelligence source told Reuters that Washington had given a “greenlight” for Turkish-backed militants to use TOW ATGMs in order to repel the SAA operation.” The only greenlight that matters is Erdogan’s, and since Putin’s given him the green light, Erdogan can supply those Grad rocket launchers to the rebels and then give them the green light to use them against the Russian airbases.
Putin has given no such green-light or any indication of a go-ahead. Stop making things up.
Watch the upping of air attacks by the Syrians and Russians, especially if the bases are fired upon.
As for Turkey, they should be told to fuck off or meet you maker, I for one am sick of them.
PS Get rid of those Turkish monitoring posts, one way or another.
Putin’s been giving Erdogan the green light from the time he signed the first Astana agreement and he’s never ever shown Erdogan the red light as far as I can see, not once concerning anything in Syria. I don’t want to see the Russians only fired up when their bases are attacked, I think they should be fired up continuously now, and fully cooperating with the SAA, I don’t like seeing 2 reports in SF [a pro Russian news source] telling us the SAA claimed they lost ground due to the lack of Russian air support, that’s embarrassing to say the least, at the worst it’s complicit in helping the rebels. No Turkey doesn’t need to be told to F-off, but Erdogan does, and the only person who can do it is Putin, without Putin help Erdogan he would have already been gone politically in the last elections. Turkey’s economy was on the brink of economic collapse before Putin began helping him out and so was Erdogan’s career, but thanks to Putin’s help he’s just managed to hold on to power and stave of his political end. Erdogan has a 45% disapproval rating in Turkey and that 45% of the population would happily jail him for life or hang him from a tree if they could, he’s not really a safe bet for anyone to back, least of all Putin. If you’re sick of Turkey just imagine how Assad and his soldiers must feel about the Putin/Erdogan relationship, a million times worse I’m sure. And why has logic has been ignored totally in this situation, Putin sells S-400’s and other high tech equipment to Turkey, and Turkey is supporting the rebels fighting against Syria and Russia, and then Turkey gives heaps of weapons and equipment to the rebels so they can not only attack the SAA, but attack the Russians themselves, where’s the logic in that. Putin’s putting Russian lives at risk just by cooperating with Erdogan and shouldn’t even be selling him S-400’s at all, Erdogan is by rights an enemy of the Russian people, he arms and sends rebel terrorists to attack the Russians, that’s what an enemy does, not a so called ‘partner’. Do you ever find in official Russian statements there seems to be a conflicting narrative, just about all other official Russian statements other than Putin’s seem a lot more harsh concerning the rebel situation in Syria, but Putin’s statements always seem conciliatory, I suspect the top Russian commanders are having harsh words with Putin behind the scenes, they don’t think diplomatically like Putin does, they just see an increased risk to Russian personnel everytime Putin capitulates to Erdogan and his rebel followers. Just bomb the lot OB posts and all, there’s hardly any ‘innocent’ civilians left there now anyway, from what I understand they’ve mostly moved out already during the last 6 months, just carpet bomb the whole de-escalation zone where there’s no civilians left, and just blow the Turks and rebels up together, that’s what Putin should do, and yes I do know he can’t really do that, but he can stop this pandering to Erdogan, and also really commit to assisting the SAA in taking back Idlib on the ground. When that’s done Assad can concentrate on dismantling the already well established autonomous zone to the north east, which just like the one in Iraq only needs more time to become an accepted reality that no one is prepared to dispute, the Syrian autonomous zone will go the same way too if left uncontentested for too long, Assad can’t afford to be wasting time here in Idlib, he has a much bigger worry and severe time constraints. So I’ll actually hold Putin responsible for Assad losing the northern governorates too if he continues to delay Assad in recovering Idlib, Assad has to control Idlib before he can start trying to solve the Kurdish problem, if the Turks left Syria altogether, the US would have one less legitimate reason for staying, maybe Trump could finally get his way and “pull the troops out”. And why is Putin backing resolution 2254 and a new constitution where Assad’s government only gets to pick 50 of the 150 representatives that will rewrite the constitution, 50 of the reps will come from opposition groups and the other 50 from by partisan political groups, most likely meaning a lot of the shitty little political parties that make up the Kurdish self autonomous zone, that’s the biggest stab in the back for Assad from Putin, “with friends like this who needs enemies”.
What a wonderful friend Russia has, congratulation.
Say thanks to Russian,
the saa and the kurds must work togeter ,and kill the terrorists
Too bad the Kurds have decided against cooperating with the SAA. Expert American brainwashing at work, and a decision of the majority. The focus was “what is best for the Kurds”.
Maybe a question could be’ why do not others also think about what is best for kurds? ”
As the family Assad ics are known for their antikurd policies over the decades, its no wonder kurds are not inclined to do Assadists and alawites and fabours.
Fake news. First of all Reuters is a jewish neocon propaganda agency. Secondly this dodgy agency quotes a “Western intelligence source”!!! That should be red flag for any intelligent person to see that this story is made up. Just ask the simple question of “who benefits” from this supposed piece of news? NATO does. It is sometimes as simple as that. If you believed this reporting on the first go, you have just indicated that your IQ is below 100. Or that you are a young person without much experience yet. NATO would love to drive a wedge between the Turks and the Russians and the Syrians. This is what this piece of garbage news is about. Some commenters on this site are also intelligence operatives (although stupidity operatives would be a more apt description) feeding this same line – “attack the Turks”, “Russians are selling out SAA”. All of it is the same garbage from the same propaganda think tank sewer.
Turkey can resupply its cockroaches all it wants, SAA will still cook them good and win :)))
SAA is taking advantage of fire by recon in their advances. I just hope they utilize more air assault troops in night insertions as blocking troops. they would need to start rolling up those flanks in Kafr Nabudah