Against all odds, Syria continues to fight for its sovereignty and independence, resisting the advance of numerous foreign-backed terrorist groups, Andre Vltchek, a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist notes.
"Aleppo is turning into the Middle-Eastern Stalingrad. But the heroic Syrian nation has made its choice: it will fight brutal and barbaric invaders, as it fought the crusaders under the leadership of great Sultan Saladin. The alternative would be slavery, something unacceptable for the Syrian people!" Vltchek writes in his article for New Eastern Outlook.
While declaring the fight against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) its primary goal, the US-led coalition is simultaneously seeking to defeat Syrian legitimate President Assad and weaken the Syrian Arab Army.
"62 Syrian soldiers were reported killed in a US-led coalition airstrike on the Syrian military base Deir ez-Zor, on September 17, in Eastern Syria. The planes destroyed the base housing for soldiers that were involved in a battle with ISIS [Daesh]," the journalist recalls.
"Almost immediately, the ISIS [Daesh] took over the hill and the area," Vltchek underscores, assuming that it resembled nothing so much as a "coordinated operation."
The West's involvement has raised a lot of questions. The journalist reminds his readers that while Russia was officially invited to step in by the Syrian legitimate government a year ago, nobody invited the US-led coalition.
Vltchek points out that what is going on in Syria has been largely misinterpreted by the Western media since the very beginning.
"The propaganda coming out of the Western mass media outlets and indoctrination-spreading institutions is so thorough, so professional, that to most of people all over the world everything related to Syria appears to be blurry, murky, and incredibly complex," he stresses.
Meanwhile, the New York Times' editorial board went even so far as to call Russia "an outlaw nation," pinning the blame for the disruption of the Syrian ceasefire on Moscow. As if this groundless allegation wasn't enough, the media outlet also accused Russia of downing the Malaysia Airline plane in 2014, bombing Syrian hospitals, and of striking a UN humanitarian convoy on September 19. Alas, there is no credible evidence behind the numerous accusations.
Commenting on the disruption of the Syrian ceasefire, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov highlighted Tuesday that it was broken by forces "advocating a military scenario" in Syria.
"Unfortunately, there were many who wanted to break up these agreements from the beginning, including within the US administration… As you know… they succeeded in this yesterday — those who opposed the political settlement of the Syrian crisis, who opposed the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions, and those who clearly harbor plans of a military scenario," Lavrov told journalists during a meeting with Saad Hariri, leader of the Lebanese party Al-Mustaqbal (Future Movement).
As US author and columnist Patrick Lawrence remarked in his op-ed for The Nation, "the Pentagon did its best to jawbone the accord into oblivion, which was its intent from the first."
So, what lies behind the West's irritation with Damascus and Russia?
In his interview with Russian online media outlet Vzglyad, Yevgeny Satanovsky, head of the Moscow-based Middle East Institute suggested that American diplomats have eventually realized that their Russian counterparts cannot be easily deceived and that they wouldn't bend to blackmailing. They understood that the Russians are very serious about fighting terrorist groups in the region and could not be played like a fiddle.
In this regard, Washington "has exhausted all possibilities" and there is nothing left for American diplomats to talk to Moscow about, Satanovsky remarked.
