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Are there Russian troops in Syria?

Recently information has been spreading through blogs and media on Russian troops being moved to Syria with an intent to take part in the fighting.

We tried to investigate the information, verify, confirm or refute the assumptions and find new facts. Here's what we got.

The information on "Putin moving troops to Syria!" became widespread after a recent video from Syria, shot presumably on August 23 during fighting to the north of Latakia, Syria's main port city.

http://ruslanleviev.livejournal.com/38649.html

Don't think Russian will get envolved in this battle even if they have troops there.
They have ships in one of syria's port so they will defend the town that contains it. That's all but who knows anyway

I really doubt whether Russia is having combat troops in Syria. There might be a few dozen military trainers, mostly based in the port city of Tartus (they always had a small training contingent based from there). IMO, protecting Assad is not one of the priorities for Putin. He might try to extend Assad's reign, but by no means he is going to spend his manpower and money trying to pop him up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3RuMuTIYYU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWq1XT9FpA

https://armsforrojava.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/the-international-freedom-battalion-of-rojava-and-participation-from-greece/

I found out about this group awhile back that looked pretty suspicious, apparently their goal is to help the Kurds re-take some of their territory back as they are currently split down the middle because of ISIS. They may or may not be russian, even if they are, to avoid liability it wouldn't surprise me if Putin was using contractors as a lot of the so called government forces can be put on somebody elses payroll. The guy in the video is German but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Russia was behind this group I'm not about to trust people who wear the hammer and sickle so openly.

It would be interesting to see Russia actually take the fight to ISIS but just watch the U.S make a huge deal out of this.

Lavrov: we're not at war in Syria, but we supply weapons to Damask.

pic shield writing: "Syrian People Republic"

I agree these are rumours but Russian military gear and personal definitely seems to be moved there:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/russia-puts-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria.html (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/russia-puts-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria.html)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696268,00.html (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4696268,00.html)
http://turkishnavy.net/2015/08/22/update-the-cargo-on-russian-landing-ship-nikolay-filchenkov/ (http://turkishnavy.net/2015/08/22/update-the-cargo-on-russian-landing-ship-nikolay-filchenkov/)

Someone should go there and restore order, otherwise in a year or two Europe will be full of Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans and I'm pretty sure a part of those asylum seekers are actually IS agents. The US doesn't seems to be very interested in cleaning up the mess what most likely they created. If the Russians can deal with those barbarians, then I appreciate their efforts.

Russian Troops aren't fighting in Syria, but they do have tactical advisors and weapons trainers. This has been true for years.

The latest propaganda attempt to smear Russia is just the US muddying the waters as usual, over a crisis the USA created with their blatant support for Takfiri terrorism.

Good article on the subject:

http://thesaker.is/a-russian-military-intervention-in-syria-i-very-much-doubt-it/ (http://thesaker.is/a-russian-military-intervention-in-syria-i-very-much-doubt-it/)

Russia is doing a great job of delivering aid to Syria.
But why did the US ask the Greek Foreign Ministry to stop Russia using its airspace to deliver much wanted aid is beyond me.
Who do they think they are?

Some wear uniforms, some don’t, but from highway checkpoints to jet fighters, Russians are being spotted all over the Assad dictatorship’s heartland.

Russian military officers are now in Damascus and meeting regularly with Iranian and Syrian counterparts, according to a source with close contacts in the Bashar al-Assad regime. “They’re out in restaurants and cafes with other high officials in the Syrian Army,” the source told The Daily Beast, “mainly concentrated in Yaafour and Sabboura, areas that are close to each other, and in west Mezze,” referring to a district in the capital where Assad’s praetorian Fourth Armored Division keeps an important airbase. “The Russians aren’t in uniform, but they’re constantly hanging out with officers from the Syrian Army’s central command.” 

Other Syrians claim to have seen Russians in uniform.

One family that recently traveled from Aleppo to Damascus by taxi before emigrating by plane to Turkey says it saw a small contingent of Russian troops embedded with Syrians at a military checkpoint in the capital. “We were near the Shaghour district when we noticed two soldiers who were not Syrian,” a family representative said. “They were tall, blond and blue-eyed and wore different fatigues from the Syrians and carried weapons. I’m telling you, they were Russian.”

The opposition-linked website All4Syria seems to corroborate such eyewitness accounts. Many residents of Damascus, it claimed, have “observed in the first three days of September a noticeable deployment of Iranian and Russian elements in the neighborhoods of Baramkeh, al-Bahsa, and Tanzim Kfarsouseh.” The Venezia Hotel in al-Bahsa “has been turned into a military barracks for the Iranians.”

Such news comes amid a flurry of reports that Russia has made plans for a direct military intervention in Syria’s four-year civil war and may actually have started one already. The New York Times reported Saturday that Russia has sent prefabricated housing units, capable of sheltering as many as 1,000 military personnel, and a portable air traffic control station to another Syrian airbase in Latakia. That coastal province, the Assad family’s ancestral home, has already seen Russian troops caught on video operating BTR-82 infantry fighting vehicles against anti-Assad rebels, atop rumors that Moscow may be deploying an “expeditionary force,” including Russian pilots who would fly combat missions.

They may already be doing so. A social media account affiliated with the al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra posted images of what appeared to be Russian Air Force jets and drones flying in the skies of Syria’s northwest Idlib province. They were, specifically, the Mig-29 Fulcrum, the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, the Su-34 Fullback, and the Pchela-1T drone. These images were analyzed as credible by the specialist website The Aviationist, which also noted that “during the past days, Flightradar24.com has exposed several flights of a Russian Air Force… Il-76 airlifter (caught by means of its Mode-S transponder) flying to and from Damascus using radio call sign ‘Manny 6,’ most probably supporting the deployment of a Russian expeditionary force.”

    “The Russians are clearly setting themselves on the ground in regime areas. … This, ironically, reinforces the Obama administration’s position.”

ISIS isn’t in Idlib; the terror army that calls itself the Islamic State was driven out of the province completely. As one U.S. intelligence official put it to The Daily Beast, “The question is, what are Russia’s underlying motivations? Are they really there to fight [ISIS], or just to prop up Assad?”

The concern is that Russia could use military strikes against ISIS as a kind of cover or feint for attacking rebel forces as well, including non-Islamist groups. The U.S. sees these forces as a potential bulwark against ISIS. But they also have as one of their primary goals overthrowing Assad—an effort that Washington has been unwilling to support.

The White House has fallen back on its customary posture of wait-and-see as proof mounts that the Russians are coming. Spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters this week: ”We are aware of reports that Russia may have deployed military personnel and aircraft to Syria, and we are monitoring those reports quite closely. Any military support to the Assad regime for any purpose, whether it’s in the form of military personnel, aircraft supplies, weapons, or funding, is both destabilizing and counterproductive.” Another unnamed U.S. official told Britain’s Daily Telegraph, ”Russia has asked for clearances for military flights to Syria, [but] we don’t know what their goals are.”

Actually, their goals aren’t terribly hard to discern, nor do they necessarily contradict implicit White House policy, whatever Josh Earnest says.

Photographs circulated on social media showing what appeared to be Russian soldiers in Zabadani, a city 45 kilometers north of Damascus, which has changed hands several times during the civil war. For months rebels have been fending off a scorched-earth assault by the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Iranian forces, which the U.N. assesses to have led to “unprecedented levels of destruction.” So the injection of Russian legionnaires into a multinational cocktail of combatants duking it out in Zabadani would make perfect sense. The city is considered the sine qua non of Iran’s “strategic corridor” in Syria, which runs from the capital to Lebanon and up along the Mediterranean coastline. The formidable Islamist rebel brigade Ahrar al-Sham knows who’s in charge here—it has even negotiated an ultimately unsuccessful ceasefire directly with the Islamic Republic rather than with Assad.

“The Russians are clearly setting themselves on the ground in regime areas, planting the flag in ‘Alawistan,’ as it were,” says Tony Badran, a Syria expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, referring to the Alawites, the schismatic Shia sect to which the Assad clan and the more powerful Syrian regime elites belong. “This, ironically, reinforces the Obama administration’s position, which has drawn a clear line around the regime enclave: The opposition is not to enter Damascus and the coastal cities. So the Russian deployment actually fits well with the administration’s approach.”

Right on cue, then, came Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement Friday that Syria would soon hold new parliamentary elections and inaugurate a power-sharing government with what he deemed a “healthy” opposition. He did not specify what he considered the diseased opposition, although this would almost certainly include Free Syrian Army fighters the CIA and Pentagon has been recruiting as U.S. proxies. 

While Putin dismissed the existence of any Russian combat forces in Syria as “premature,” he did allow that he was “looking at various options” for militarily involving himself in the war.  Coming from someone who only admits to Russian invasions after the fact, such a signposting of motive should not be ignored.

Moscow’s close coordination with Tehran, both in Damascus and internationally, is also no coincidence. Iran is now busy shopping a new international “peace plan” for Syria, one that goes beyond the parameters of the previously inked Geneva II protocol. 

Intriguingly, just weeks after Iran agreed to a deal to control its nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief, Major General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of its own expeditionary force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force, flew to Moscow for talks with Russian officials, violating the international travel ban related to his terrorist activity. No doubt solidifying Russian backing for whatever he has planned for Syria was high up on Soleimani’s agenda.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time since the Syrian war broke out that there’s been chatter about Russian troops in Damascus.

In May 2013, sources close to the Kremlin suggested that Putin had dispatched the Zaslon special forces detachment to the Syrian capital. Formed in 1998, and conceived as a clandestine unit combining the purviews of America’s Delta Force and Secret Service, Zaslon consists of a mere 280 highly trained operatives. It answers to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and is tasked with protecting high-value Russian officials in uncertain conditions and sometimes even conducting assassinations. It was rumored to have killed Iraqi insurgents in 2006 after the latter had captured and executed Russian diplomats.

As Mark Galeotti, a New York University-based specialist on Russia’s military and security forces, observed two years ago: “According to one Russian report, two Zaslon elements were also deployed to Baghdad in the dying days of the [Saddam] Hussein regime. Their mission was to seize or destroy documents which Moscow would have found embarrassing had they ended up in U.S. hands. Given the scale and depth of Russian support for Assad, it could similarly be that they are also in Syria to cover Moscow’s tracks or else ensure that sensitive military technology—including new surface-to-air systems—does not end up in foreign hands.”

Under the present circumstances, it is now likely that any Russian soldiers in Damascus are there to fortify and ring-fence another spent Baathist regime, if not to join in a war that is fought increasingly by “foreign hands.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/05/exposing-russia-s-secret-army-in-syria.html

Write in the social network, Deputy Chief of foreign military intelligence GRU, the Russian Federation, Major-General Ivanov was killed on a mission in Syria

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COVswyIW8AAO95p.jpg

country troops must not involve or intervention each other. This cause will make World War 3 get start

LOL Where is all this bullshit coming from?

I call bullshit

Once again the Empire's propaganda machine is pumping out BS  story after story to demonize Russia, as usual.

Meanwhile, OBumble continues to provide training and weapons to ISIS and Al-Nusra terrorists, making the war in syria worse.

Who cares about Syria? There are Russian troops in Tennessee! Google it.

http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/04/19/more-proof-that-russian-and-chinese-troops-have-breached-the-territorial-integrity-of-the-united-states/

http://www.westernjournalism.com/are-world-heritage-sites-being-used-to-train-russian-troops-in-the-us/

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/03/tennessee-state-militiaguard-has-stopped-dhs-armored-vehicles-from-kentucky-russians-with-dhs-eagle-uniforms-2583388.html

http://americanholocaustcoming.blogspot.com/2013/08/urgent-russiandhs-troops-uncovered-in.html

:)

Not one of your good posts I see  :D those links and tall tales are right out of some weird imaginations.
Very funny to read somewhat but you let yourself down, especially when you think we would believe it.
99% of the sheep would though.

I am sure you posted them as to see who would bite and believe.
That God entity is mentioned too in one of them.

Well, if you don't like those sites, there are lots more. Simply Google it.   :)

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Russian military experts were present in Syria, the first official confirmation that the Russian military is on the ground in Syria after weeks of increased talk that Moscow may be growing its presence there.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said the experts were assisting with Russian arms deliveries to Syria which Moscow says are aimed at combating terrorism.

This is quite surprising. What Russia is going to gain out of this? Its quite sad that Syria war is going for several months and no solution in the pipeline. Thanks for the information

It is not a surprise and Russia need to be present in the Mediterranean Sea and ofc it doesn't have too many allies there except Syria so yeah Russia need to keep the president at any cost or else find a new port for its ships

Russia declares a danger area for missile firings off Syrian coast until 17 September

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COeUll5WUAANJUr.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COeUllZW8AA48ri.jpg

There are agents and troops from almost every country/special forces in Middle East right now. But I don't believe that Russia take part of this war, at least for now. When ISIS clear the area, neighbor countries will try to get soil from Syria. In that time Russia might send troops there.

I've heard the rumor as well strategically I can support a Russian deployment of troops there
Geo politically the question becomes more difficult as the country is in a very bad state with the serious amounts of refugees emigrating from the ISIS held territories.

In a sense I trust Russia far more than ISIS to stabilize the country even if its for resources than the chaotic warloards in that country at present, those that can are already moving off the Europe as seen in the immigration news.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34205003
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/isis-and-assad-must-be-both-be-defeated-by-hard-military-force--david-cameron-signals-uk-is-close-to-bombing-syria-10493072.html

I hope so

It is not weird to be true with the Putin in the head of Russia. He think he could rebuild the empire of Russia even bigger of URSS. So he could do everything he can make him seems the big emperor which can decide part of the fate of the world.

Russian Foreign Minister acknowledged that the planes that provide humanitarian assistance in Syria and military equipment

As per me Russians were certainly supplying equipment and support a couple of years ago when this mess was confined to Syria. Its certainly not outside the realm possibility that Russia is more involved in Syria  One of the primary reasons the west didn't follow up on its threats against Assad was Russia's position. 
Russia considers Syria in its sphere of influence and that it has strategic value for them.

True. And it is not weird that one day Russia send there the very army in defense of Assad. It was Russia that was save Assad in the case of chemical armies and will defend him on any way. For Russia is not problem all the mess that is created there. Important is to not be touched Assad.

Russia support Assad regime in past years, time will show what is their intentions in that region. Who knows what kind of inteligence network Russian spy`s have there but for sure they have it.

It is very easy to be understand the intentions. If until now Putin has made all that efforts to protect him cannot change behavior in the future. Having in mind then the mess which is created there and Russia again protect Assad without thinking too much about ISIS or other problems for all the population it is easy to understand the future of the relationship between them and Assad.

Right .. Russian send troop to be sure if Assaad is kicked by a new one ...... Russia will not be kicked too from the country ... simply that ... durint this time who supply explosive barils to Assaad ... dropped on civils ?

We are trainned anyway for all these lies ... We have not soldier in crimea ... -> We liberate the crimea LoL ... we have no soldier in Syria ... We have soldier in Syria... who trust russia really ?

Lol. You have forget Ukraine. Russia never sent soldiers and tanks and other strategic and important weapons in Ukraine. All the Russian that are catches there are not Russians or were gone there with their free will. But with the uniform of the Russian army and in the Russian tanks and the Russian weapons.

Assad is just pion in old game between Russia and America. Russia is protecting their borders on all sides, but as we see what happend on their west in Ukraine, on south east with Assad, Iraq.. i`m not sure where will that culminate.

Now that Assad is losing, they will have to do something

They refused to deny or confirm that they have ground troops in Syria, the same way Quickseller refused to confirn or deny his alts

Assad isn't losing, actually. His troops are highly motivated and often win battles, slaughtering dozens of foreign-backed terrorists.

The problem is that Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey aren't backing down on their support for ISIS and Al-Nusra, so the rebels that get killed have a very high pool of fresh recruits to bring into the battlefield.

It's like a constant wave of Zerg flowing into the country. Russia is just evening the playing field by providing high precision weaponry to the Syrian army.

It is no secret that Russia is supporting the Assad regime, which happens to be the last secular government in the Middle East (after the NATO and the CIA managed to topple the other secular regimes in the region). Their intentions might be questionable. But at the same time, what about the intentions by the CIA, who have actively supported the ISIS and the Al Nusra?

A big wrong. To not be able to understand who they are since the beginning. Lack of professionalism and naivety that they will be always under they orders.

BREAKING: Obama says Russia's involvement in Syria indicates Assad is worried

AlArabiya

Obumble talking out his asshole like the good little shill he is.

Making Syria appear weak when they clearly are not is one of the goals of this latest propaganda campaign.

Someone give Obummer the hint that it isn't going to work already.

US official: Russia military supply flight to Syria continuing - 7 so far using Condor transport planes
Russia has 200 naval infantry to Syria base w/enough modular housing for up to 1,500 troops

Are very few. Soon will be heard that much more will be there. Russia cannot stay without doing war. It is in the wonders of Putin to be a great military leader. All the its last story testify this.

I just see in all that mess happening around the world and just innocent people getting hurt. And those refugees from Syria don't go to Russia they go to Europe. There is a lot of space for many conspiracy theory's here.

Russian building in Syria runway for heavy aircraft, - human rights activists

Russia said they are open to Syrian refugees,

Any number about how many really made their way to Russia and how many have been accepted?

Russia deployed in Syria, 7 T-90 tanks - Reuters