#2
Kremlin.ru
November 26, 2015
Presentation of foreign ambassadors' letters of credence (excerpt)

Vladimir Putin received letters of credence from 15 foreign ambassadors. By tradition, the ceremony marking the official start of the ambassadors' mission in the Russian Federation, took place in the Grand Kremlin Palace's Alexander Hall.

Speech at presentation by foreign ambassadors of their letters of credence

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you in the Moscow Kremlin and congratulate you on the start of your important and honourable diplomatic mission in Russia.

Responsible diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching mutual understanding and promoting cooperation are in high demand in the current complicated international situation, when we are facing challenges and threats unprecedented in scale and nature. These are terrorism-related threats with its barbaric, cold-blooded crimes.

More than 100,000 terrorist acts have been committed in the world over the past decade, their victims being people of various nationalities and religions. More than 32,000 people from 67 countries fell victim to extremist terrorist groups in 2014 alone. Russia's position regarding terrorism has always been consistent, clear and firm: this evil should be fought uncompromisingly and persistently. We believe that any attempts to whitewash terrorism, to connive with terrorists should be considered as complicity in terrorism, complicity in crimes.

I would like to remind you that it was the passive position of a number of countries, and often their direct collusion with terrorists that actually led to the rise of the terrible phenomenon known as the Islamic State. They not only cover up the terrorists, their illicit trafficking in oil, people, drugs, works of art and arms, but also benefit from it, making hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars.

I would like to hope that the terrorist act against the Russian airplane in Egypt, the tragic events in France and the atrocious mass killings in Lebanon, Nigeria and Mali would lead to an understanding of the need for the entire international community to join efforts in the fight against terrorism.

I expect a truly broad international anti-terrorist coalition to be formed that would act in a coordinated fashion, as a powerful force and would, in particular, support the actions of the Russian troops that are carrying out successful military operations against terrorist groups in Syria.

We will continue our efforts to reach agreement with all our partners, including those within the framework of the Vienna agreements. We proceed from the fact that all countries in the world are interested in such coordinated joint work.

In this connection, I have to say that we find absolutely inexplicable the treacherous stabs in our back dealt by those we thought to be our partners and allies in the antiterrorist struggle. I am referring to the incident with the Russian bomber hit by Turkish air defence forces. What happened two days ago in the skies over Syria is against common sense and international law: the plane was shot down over Syrian territory.

Meanwhile, we have still not heard any comprehensible apologies from the Turkish political leaders or any offers to compensate for the damage caused or promises to punish the criminals for their crime. One gets the impression that the Turkish leaders are deliberately leading Russian-Turkish relations into a gridlock - and we are sorry to see this.

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 #3
Kremlin.ru
November 24, 2015
Meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan (excerpt)

Vladimir Putin had talks with King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, who is in Russia on a working visit.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you for your condolences, including your words in connection with today's crash of our fighter aircraft. This event goes beyond regular efforts to combat terrorism.

Our servicemen are engaged in a heroic fight against terrorism, not sparing themselves or their own lives. However, today's loss is a result of a stab in the back delivered by terrorists' accomplices. There is no other way I can qualify what happened today.

Our aircraft was shot down over Syrian territory by an air-to-air missile launched from a Turkish F-16 plane. It fell on Syrian territory, four kilometres from the Turkish border. When it was attacked in the air, it was flying at an altitude of 6,000 metres, one kilometre away from the Turkish territory. In any case, our plane and our pilots were in no way a threat to the Turkish Republic in any way. This is obvious.

They were conducting an operation to fight ISIS in northern Latakia - a mountainous area where militants, mainly those coming from the Russian Federation, are concentrated. In this sense, they were doing their direct duty delivering preventive blows at terrorists who could return to Russia at any moment. Those people should certainly be classified as international terrorists.

We have long been recording the movement of a large amount of oil and petroleum products to Turkey from ISIS-occupied territories. This explains the significant funding the terrorists are receiving. Now they are stabbing us in the back by hitting our planes that are fighting terrorism. This is happening despite the agreement we have signed with our American partners to prevent air incidents, and, as you know, Turkey is among those who are supposed to be fighting terrorism within the American coalition.

If ISIS is making so much money - we are talking about tens or maybe even hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars - in oil trade and they are supported by the armed forces of an entire state, it is clear why they are being so daring and impudent, why they are killing people in such gruesome ways, why they are committing terrorist attacks all over the world, including in the heart of Europe.

We will of course carefully analyse what has happened and today's tragic event will have significant consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.

We have always treated Turkey not merely as a close neighbour, but as a friendly state. I do not know who benefits from what has happened today. We certainly do not. Moreover, instead of immediately establishing contacts with us, as far as we know Turkey turned to its NATO partners to discuss this incident. As if we had hit their plane and not the other way around.

Do they wish to make NATO serve ISIS? I know that every state has its regional interests, and we always respect those. However, we will never turn a blind eye to such crimes as the one that was committed today.

Obviously, we expect the international community to make an effort to join forces in the fight against this common evil.

In this connection, we are counting on the active participation of all the countries in the region in this struggle. I am therefore very happy to meet with you today, Your Majesty. We will continue working with your special services experts and your military, as well as with other countries in the region.

Thank you.

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#4
Washington Post
November 26, 2015
Editorial
Russian provocations led to the downing of its fighter jet by Turkey
 
FOLLOWING TURKEY'S shoot-down of a Russian military jet Tuesday, Western leaders rightly addressed themselves to heading off an escalation between Moscow and a NATO member. In the process, they were not as clear as they could have been about where responsibility for the incident lay. So we'll say it: The first shoot-down by a NATO member of a Russian plane in 60 years is the result of the reckless and increasingly dangerous behavior of Vladi­mir Putin's regime.

As NATO's secretary general and a U.S. military spokesman confirmed, the SU-24 plane was struck after crossing into Turkey's airspace; according to a statement by the Turkish Embassy in Washington, it was one of two planes that violated the frontier. Also confirmed by Western officials is that the Russian pilot failed to respond to 10 warnings.

Moreover, the airspace violation was not an isolated incident. Russian aircraft have repeatedly entered Turkish airspace since beginning operations in Syria in September. Russia apologized for one violation in October; in another case, it denied responsibility for a drone that Turkey shot down. NATO officials said the previous airspace violations looked deliberate - perhaps because they were not limited to Turkey. In the past several years Russian aircraft have invaded the airspace of and submarines have cruised the waters of numerous NATO and European countries - not to mention Mr. Putin's outright invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Putin claims Russian forces are in Syria to fight the Islamic State, but there were no jihadist forces in the area where the SU-24s were operating. Instead, they were attacking areas held by militias made up of ethnic Turkmen and backed by Turkey. Just last week the Turkish government summoned the Russian ambassador in Ankara to demand that Moscow stop bombing Turkmen villages, warning that "this could lead to serious consequences." Russia's response was to carry out new raids and to violate Turkish airspace.

Mr. Putin no doubt has been calculating that Turkey, like other NATO members, would not dare respond to his provocations with force. When he was proved wrong, like a bully unexpectedly punched, he resorted to lies and slanders: Russian planes were not in Turkish airspace; Turkey was defending the Islamic State; the attack was "a stab in the back." That last phrase was made famous by another strongman, in Germany in the 1930s. It should give pause to those in the West who still cling to the notion that Mr. Putin can be converted into an ally.

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 #5
Washington Post
November 26, 2015
How Turkey confounded Putin's favorite narratives
By Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of the Global Transitions Program at the Legatum Institute in London.
 
On Monday, two Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian plane which Turkey said had crossed into its airspace. Various interpretations could in theory be placed upon this event. Depending on one's point of view, it could be described as an act of self-defense on the part of Turkey, a NATO member - or an act of aggression. But to Vladimir Putin, and to his claque in the Russian media, only one question matters: To which of his narratives should it belong?

I realize that sounds like an overly literary, possibly even pretentious way to describe Russian strategic communications. But follow the Russian media over any time period and you soon begin to see patterns in the reporting of news. Nothing ever just "happens." Every event is always part of a larger story, usually a conspiracy theory. Russia, or rather a plot to destroy or undermine Russia, always lies at the center. Elements of reality are included in the story, but distorted with virtual reality in order to suit the story line.

Over the past couple of years, we've watched several versions of this process unfold. Famously, the Euromaidan demonstrations in Ukraine in 2014 were repeatedly interpreted by the Kremlin as a revival of Nazism, inspired and supported by NATO. The Russian foreign minister scolded Germany for supporting a "Brown Revolution." Patriotic television entertainment depicted fantasy battles between Russian biker gangs and "Ukrainian fascists" bearing swastikas or NATO symbols. The propaganda continued even when elections brought centrists to power and excluded the tiny far-right parties in Ukraine from any serious influence, and even when NATO failed to come to the military defense of Ukraine.

With the Russian bombardment of Syria, Putin launched a new narrative. At the U.N. General Assembly in September, he called for an anti-terror coalition "similar to the anti-Hitler coalition" which could "unite a broad range of forces that are resolutely resisting those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind." This time, the enemies were not Ukrainians but terrorists. The anti-NATO language was toned down. Patriotic television news showed effective strikes against terrorist cells. This propaganda continued even as it became clear that the Russians were targeting all opponents of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, mostly not the Islamic State.

The Russian media did not dispense with their previous obsessions, of course. Instead, they connected the dots. Russian state television has claimed that Ukraine is a "supplier of weapons to ISIS." The Russian Defense Ministry's television channel, meanwhile, has declared that Islamic State fighters are being trained in Ukraine. It seemed possible, for a time, that both enemies could be maintained at once.

But Turkey has now added a new level of complexity. Is the downing of the plane a part of the Nazi/NATO "aggression against Russia"? If so, that might require a Russian response to NATO. Is it part of the terrorist plot against Russia? If so, that looks a bit odd, given that Turkey claims to be fighting terrorism too.

For the moment, Russia has chosen the second option. The NATO element has been left out. Turkey, a false friend, and an "accomplice of terrorists" has "stabbed us in the back," Putin declared. "The Turks are saving ISIS," one "expert" said on Russian state television.

Given the alternatives, that's good news: It means that Russia is unlikely to respond to the Turks militarily and unlikely to drag NATO into broader conflict. It could also mean that Putin still hopes to be part of a larger coalition in Syria, or that he still wants a role in whatever Western diplomatic effort might eventually bring the war to an end. After all, he needs evidence for another one of his narratives: That he has brought back his country's "superpower" status and its international influence.

But that doesn't mean that the story has come to an end. What if there are further Russian losses, or another plane is shot down? What if the Syrian war begins to go badly, or becomes unpopular in Russia? Then the Kremlin will need an explanation for its failures and the narrative will have to change again. NATO might still prove an excellent villain. The only question is whether Russia's response will then play itself out in virtual reality - or in real life.

#6
The Independent (UK)
November 25, 2015
Work with Russia in Syria and we may see rewards in Ukraine
Russian airmen inscribing 'For Paris' on a bomb was a plea to be accepted as part of the team
By Mary Dejevsky
One of the country's most respected commentators on Russia, the EU and the US, Mary Dejevsky has worked as a foreign correspondent all over the world, including Washington, Paris and Moscow. She is now the chief editorial writer and a columnist at The Independent and regularly appears on radio and television.

So fast have events in and around Syria been moving in recent weeks that the bigger picture and the longer term have tended to be lost amid the hectic here and now.

Of the latest distractions, one - David Cameron's speech today, in which he is expected to argue for Britain to join the alliance striking Isis forces in Syria from the air - is little more than a detail in that bigger picture, albeit a misguided one.

The other - Tuesday's shooting down by the Turkish air force of a Russian military jet - was infinitely more serious in its implications. A stand-off - or worse - between Russia and Turkey threatened - and still threatens - a halt to the only hopeful development linked to the Syria imbroglio for several years: the multilateral talks held in Vienna two weeks ago, at Russia's instigation.

As is sometimes the case, though, a glimpse of the abyss may have prompted second thoughts. And while initial responses from Turkish and Russian leaders were fierce - Vladimir Putin memorably said that Russia had been "stabbed in the back" by "an accomplice of terrorists" - a reference to Turkey's support of certain Syrian rebel groups - several things that might then have happened did not happen.

It was left mostly to outside observers to point out that this was the first armed clash between a Nato country and Russia for more than 50 years. Nato did not treat the incident as an attack that would warrant invoking Article 5. Russian officials clarified that when they mentioned retaliation, they did not envisage a military response. Military-to-military relations were suspended, and the Russian Foreign Minister shelved a trip to Ankara, but diplomatic relations were not cut. And, in a happy turn of fate, one of the Russian pilots was reported to have been rescued. President Obama, for his part, while supporting Turkey verbally, made a very public call for "de-escalation".

All of which means that, although ill-feeling between Russia and Turkey will persist, the fallout could have been a great deal worse. More significantly, though, it also suggests that Russia's investment in a Syria settlement is serious and that it will not allow either its military or its diplomatic efforts to be thwarted, however unjust it feels the loss of its plane to be. The stakes for Russia, and for Putin, are higher.

Russia's intervention in Syria was in part a gamble: that the Russian military could achieve something with its modernised air power, and that its use of force would galvanise diplomacy. But it may have been less a gamble than desperation. Russia's role as anything more than a second-tier regional player was at risk. Not only was the survival of its one Middle Eastern ally, President Bashar al-Assad, threatened, so - still more important - was the very existence of the Syrian state. And if the state were to collapse, Russia envisaged long-term disorder of the sort that plagues Iraq and Libya, along with the very same threat to Russia's security as the UK and France see from their citizens who have gone to fight with Isis.

At stake for Russia was its sense of itself as a power capable of operating internationally; but also its sense of itself as inherently European. One image stands out from the past two weeks - and Kremlin spin-doctors surely meant it to. This was the sight of Russian airmen inscribing "For Paris" (in Russian) on one of the bombs attached to their plane. A whole essay could be written on the meaning of that scene, but - in summary - what it said was that Russia sees itself as part of the Western world in the fight against militant Islam. Above all, it was a plea to be accepted as part of the team.

The chief obstacle to this, of course, from the Western side is Ukraine: Russia's annexation of Crimea; its meddling in the east of Ukraine, and its supposed culpability in the downing of MH17. The sanctions that were the US and EU response are still in force. But how soon, if ever, should the West "move on"? If it acknowledges Russia as the chief intermediary and power-broker over Syria, would that amount to betrayal of Ukraine?

Thus far, the West has been cautious. The US made the first move in May, when John Kerry stopped over for talks with Putin. David Cameron met Putin on the margins of the G20 in Antalya two weeks ago. François Hollande has travelled to Washington and Moscow in the wake of the Paris attacks. The impression each likes to give is that Syria and Ukraine belong in separate compartments, and that, with Syria, Russia is moving closer to the Western position on the future of Assad and the fight against Isis.

This is self-deception of the first order: it is the West that has moved, and by quite a long way in two years. But if such a stratagem helps break the deadlock, either in relations between the West and Russia, or over Syria, so be it. There will be no progress towards peace in Syria without Russia.

Yet it is also an error, to my mind, for the West to read Russia's intentions towards Ukraine as it does. What if Russia is actually trying to disengage without so far as possible losing face and without inflaming the passions of Russia's nationalists? And what if a by-product of the Syria intervention is to allow this to happen? It would be inconsistent, would it not, for Moscow to insist - as it does - that Syrians must determine the future of their country, while denying the same to Ukraine.

So, yes, the West needs to re-engage with Russia as the best hope for peace in Syria. But it does not need to keep Ukraine in another box. There is a link between the two, but not the one we suspect; Russia can be brought in from the cold on both fronts at once.
 

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 #7
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/
November 25, 2015
DOUBLE STANDARDS
By Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history.

In a previous post, I defended the practice of whataboutism. Its success, I think, owes a lot to a widespread belief that Western states are hypocritical and abide by double standards, condemning others for things that they do themselves.

This week the Turks shot down a Russian airplane over Syria. The facts are disputed. Turkey claims that the Russian plane violated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, and that it was given multiple warnings before being shot down. The Russians deny entering Turkish airspace, and the rescued navigator of the plane says that no warnings were given.

I can't say who is telling the truth, but if it is the Turks, then they, and their NATO allies, are guilty of double standards. After the Syrians shot down a Turkish plane which had violated Syrian airspace in 2012, Turkish president Abdullah Gul complained that, 'it is routine for jet fighters to sometimes fly in and out over [national] borders', and the then Turkish Prime Minister (now President), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, remarked that, 'a short term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack.' NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen agreed that, 'It is another example of the Syrian authorities' disregard for international norms.' According to the BBC, 'in a letter to the UN Security Council, Turkey described the shooting down of its reconnaissance plane as a "hostile act" and "a serious threat to peace and security in the region".' Yet, this week, Turkey and NATO took a very different line. It was the very short term violation of Turkish airspace by the Russians which was the 'hostile act', and the Turkish action which was entirely justified. 'We stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO Ally, Turkey,' said Secretary General Rasmussen.

This double standard should not surprise us. Nowadays, it is quite routine. The question I want to pose is whether it can somehow be justified. Many Western human rights activists and philosophers think that the answer is yes. For the past 20 years, the intellectual movement in the West has been away from an international order based on equal, sovereign nations and towards one in which states which are deemed liberal democracies (by us in the West, of course), or are friendly to the West, enjoy greater rights than those who are deemed otherwise. Not all nations are equal.

Take the views of Canadian philosopher Brian Orend, a prominent just war theorist. In his book The Morality of War, Orend argues that states do not exist for themselves, but to safeguard and promote the rights of their citizens. 'Minimally just states', which manage to do so to at least some degree, merit full sovereign rights. But those which are not 'minimally just' have no rights at all. They forfeit the right not to be attacked. Apply this to the Syrian airplane cases, and you can see how the one shooting was seen as justified and the other was not. Syria, in the eyes of its critics, is not a 'minimally just state'. As such, it has no sovereign rights, and so is not entitled to shoot down aircraft which violate its airspace. Turkey, by contrast, is at least 'minimally just', and so does have a right to self-defence. A double standard exists, because a double standard should exist.

This is, I believe, very dangerous logic. Orend, like most human rights thinkers, imagines that there is a universal moral law which defines what is 'minimally just'. The problem is that not everybody agrees. The ideologues of the Islamic State, for instance, imagine that their system is more just than ours. If being 'minimally just' gives you latitude to do things which others cannot, then everybody gets that latitude, because everybody thinks that they are just. The only way that we can restrain action in war, and in international affairs more generally, is to treat all as equal.

Moreover, those who promote double standards seem to imagine that states and peoples who are deemed not to have full rights will simply accept their inferior status without protest. This is not the case. People notice hypocrisy. They resent double standards. They are likely not to submit, but to resist, just as Russia is currently refusing to accept the double standards of the West and is striking back in an effort to restore a system based on sovereign equality. Ultimately, an order based upon inequality cannot be a stable or peaceful order. Western states have ignored this fact for too long, and are now paying the price.

In short, if the Syrians were wrong to shoot down a Turkish plane which flew over Syria for several minutes, the Turks were wrong to shoot down a Russian plane which flew over Turkey for 17 seconds.

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 #8
Russia Insider
www.russia-insider.com
November 26, 2015
Here Is Why Erdogan's Ambush of Russian Jet Was a Massive Blunder
Turkish president actually undermined his Western support
By Alexander Mercouris
Alexander Mercouris is a writer on international affairs with a special interest in Russia and law.  He has written extensively on the legal aspects of NSA spying and events in Ukraine in terms of human rights, constitutionality and international law.  He worked for 12 years in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a lawyer, specializing in human rights and constitutional law.

In shooting down the Russian SU24 Turkey's President Erdogan has blundered badly.

He has caused the Russians to reinforce in Syria and is feeding Western doubts about him.

He has exposed himself to his Western allies as a dangerous and unpredictable ally.

There is a very small possibility the shoot down of the SU24 took place without Erdogan's knowledge.

However the more we learn about the incident the more planned it looks

The SU24 was shot down very close to the Turkish border. The Turks claim it crossed the border. However if it did, then by the Turks' own account it did so for just a few seconds.

The Turks claim they gave the SU24 10 warnings over a period of 5 minutes.  

If true, this can only have been when the SU24 was in Syrian airspace. The Russians deny they received any warnings at all.  

The US and NATO say they registered the Turkish warnings but they say it without much show of conviction.

Fox News has broadcast what it says is one of the warnings. However, if it was provided by a Turkish source - as is likely - then it is not reliable since it could so easily have been made up after the event.

Both sides anyway appear to agree that the SU24 was flying away from Turkey and back to its base in Syria when it was shot down. That argues against it posing any possible threat to Turkey when it was shot down.

The SU24 crashed well inside Syria. The Russians say the Turkish F16 that shot it down entered Syrian airspace to do it. Whilst there is no independent evidence to confirm that, the location of the crash site means it may be true.

The facts, though disputed in some places, overall do not justify the Turkish decision to shoot the SU24 down, even if it did violate Turkish airspace for a few seconds.

Embarrassingly a recording apparently exists, made in connection to the Syrian shoot-down of a Turkish F4 fighter back in 2012, in which no less a person than Erdogan himself apparently also says that an infringement of airspace of just a few seconds does not justify shooting an aircraft down.

Frankly the facts suggest a planned ambush by Turkish F16 fighters of a Russian aircraft engaged in bombing operations inside Syria.  

If so then Erdogan would almost certainly have been involved. He might not have given a specific order to shoot down the particular SU24 that was shot down. However he almost certainly set the rules of engagement that led to the ambush that caused it to be shot down.

Why would he do such a thing?

Erdogan is someone who far more closely resembles the Western image of Putin than Putin himself does.

Where claims that Putin is corrupt and a billionaire are wholly unsubstantiated and almost certainly untrue, that Erdogan is a billionaire is an acknowledged fact, as is the involvement of some members of his family in shady business dealings.

Contrary to his Western image Putin's manner and language is polite and restrained. Erdogan by contrast is often aggressive and confrontational.

Putin is highly calculating and always consults his chief advisers before making a decision.

Erdogan is impulsive and arbitrary, and is far more likely than Putin to make decisions on the hoof.

Unlike Putin, who puts up with everything, Erdogan is a notoriously prickly character who reacts badly to criticism.

He has jailed opposition activists and journalists and cracked down on the media in ways that Putin never has.

Recent events will have left Erdogan seething.

Firstly, the Russian intervention in Syria has reversed the tide of the war, which seemed to be going his way - or rather the way of the various jihadi groups he has been backing.

It also killed his project for a no-fly zone over Syria, which he was close to getting the US to back in the summer.

Erdogan must also have felt humiliated at the G20 summit in Antaliya in Turkey, of which he was nominally the host.

Putin produced evidence of the financial support the Islamic State is receiving from individuals in certain G20 countries. No one doubts Turkey is one of those G20 countries.

We also know that Putin also showed the other G20 leaders satellite images of lines of fuel tankers transporting the Islamic State's oil to Turkey.

There are in fact widespread rumours of members of the Turkish establishment profiting from trade with the Islamic State. Some rumours even point the finger at members of Erdogan's family, including his son.

To add to Erdogan's sense of humiliation, in the last few days the Russians have begun bombing the fuel tankers, disrupting the oil trade between the Islamic State and its go-betweens in Turkey, whilst saying pointedly that they "have" to do it because "others" are failing to.

Lastly, the Russians have also been bombing the region close to Turkey where the SU24 was shot down.

Several villages in this area are inhabited by people who the news media calls "Turkmen".  

This is misleading. These people are not Turkmen from the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan. They are ethnic Turks who were left in Syria when the Ottoman empire broke up.

The Western media regularly accuses Putin of posing as the defender of ethnic Russians outside Russia and of using ethnic Russians to destabilise the governments of former Soviet states.  

There is no evidence of this or that Putin has ever entertained the ambition to recreate the USSR that is commonly attributed to him - including by no less a person than Obama himself.

By contrast Erdogan definitely does pose as the defender of Turks outside Turkey.  

He has also pursued a "neo-Ottoman" foreign policy intended to reassert Turkish influence in neighbouring states like Syria that were once part of the Ottoman empire.

Given these ambitions, Russian bombing of an area of Syria inhabited by ethnic Turks - one previously marked out by Erdogan for one of his safe havens - would for Erdogan have been both infuriating and humiliating. It is easy to see how he might see it as a challenge.

In the light of all this, it is not difficult to see how someone like Erdogan, out of a mixture of anger, injured pride and miscalculation, might have ordered his air force to set an ambush to shoot down a Russian airplane when a good opportunity arose.

No doubt he calculated that when that happened the West would back him as a NATO ally threatened by Russian "aggression".

That way he might have hoped to get his own back at the Russians and to wrest the political initiative back from them, whilst reassuring his allies in Syria and his supporters in Turkey that he is still a force to be reckoned with.

His officials over the last few days have been issuing warnings to the Russians to stop bombing ethnic Turkish areas.

In light of what has happened these warnings look like an attempt to set up an alibi to justify the shooting down of a Russian aircraft before it took place.

That the shoot-down was a planned rather than a spontaneous act, is also strongly suggested by how the Turks reacted after it took place.

Instead of complaining to the Russians or - better still - asking for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, which is the appropriate venue to discuss an event like that, the Turks turned to NATO instead.

The Russians have complained about this, and frankly it looks like an attempt to gain diplomatic cover from Turkey's Western allies for a shoot-down that was planned in advance.

What has happened since however shows the extent of Erdogan's miscalculation.

Firstly, the circumstances of the shoot-down were not prepared properly.

Instead of coming up with a convincing scenario that might justify the shoot-down, the Turks did the opposite. The best they could come up with was a claim the SU24 violated Turkish airspace for just a few seconds.

That makes the Turks rather than the Russians look aggressive and irresponsible.

The result is that judging from the comments appearing on Western media threads, the Western public is unconvinced and is swinging behind the Russians instead of the Turks.

The Russians for their part are refusing to follow Erdogan's script.  

Instead of warning and threatening the Turks in a way that might have given credence to Turkish claims of Russian "aggression", they are stressing Turkey's connections to the Islamic State and are taking steps to beef up their air defences.

They have moved the Moskva missile cruiser with its S300 missiles closer to the Syrian coast and have publicly given its captain orders to destroy aircraft that threaten their strike force.

They are also deploying the very powerful and sophisticated S400 anti aircraft missile system to their air base in Syria.

There is also a strong probability the Russians will reinforce their strike group in Syria with more air defence fighters.

They have publicly said their strike aircraft are henceforth forbidden from flying without air cover from Russian fighters.  

Since there are only four Russian fighters in Syria - the four SU30s at Latakia - it is difficult to see how this can be done without sending more fighters there.

In other words what Erdogan has achieved is to give the Russians the reason or excuse to reinforce their air group in Syria beyond anything they had probably planned or intended.  

With the deployment of S400 missiles in Syria, and the likely deployment of more sophisticated Russian fighters there, the balance of military power in the region is shifting even further away from Turkey, Israel and the US.

US and Israeli policy has been to do everything possible to prevent deployment of missile systems like the S400 to the region. The S400's deployment to Syria has overturned that.

Combined with the deployment of sophisticated Russian fighters to Syria - now almost certainly on their way - events are moving in a way that must be filling Washington and Jerusalem with concern. They must be furious with Erdogan for bringing it about.

That however is only the start of it.

The biggest nightmare for the US and its European allies is not that the Turks will shoot down a Russian aircraft. It is that the Russians will shoot down a Turkish aircraft in circumstances where Western public opinion backs Russia.

The US and NATO do not want to be put in a position where they have to choose between upsetting the Turks by failing to give them the sort of backing the Turks feel they are entitled to as a NATO ally, and upsetting Western public opinion by siding publicly with Turkey and the jihadis groups it supports in a dispute with Russia in which Western public opinion backs Russia.

Erdogan has just brought that nightmare scenario for the West much closer.

The anger this is causing, and which Western leaders privately feel towards Erdogan, is shown by what they said after the SU24 was shot down.

If Erdogan was expecting a resounding show of support he must be disappointed.

Though the US and NATO made ritual comments of support, the main theme of their comments was not support for Turkey but a demand for restraint.

Some of the comments contained clear criticism of Turkey.

The harshest comments came from Germany. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel was especially outspoken, saying

"This incident shows for the first time that we are to dealing with an actor who is unpredictable according to statements from various parties of the region - that is not Russia, that is Turkey."

He was backed by his SPD colleague Foreign Minister Steinmeier, who said

"What we must hope for is that this occurrence will not deal a setback to the encouraging first talks, which offer a small hope of de-escalating the Syrian conflict."
Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffan Siebert, simply said

"We call on Ankara and Moscow to do everything possible to avoid a further escalation."

These words put Ankara - a German ally and NATO partner - on the same level as Moscow, Berlin's and NATO's supposed adversary.

Elsewhere words of support for Turkey have been lukewarm at best.

Steve Warren, spokesman for the US-led Combined Joint Task Force, said

"This is an incident between the Russian and the Turkish governments. It is not an issue that involves the [US-led coalition operations]. Our combat operations against ISIL (IS, ISIS) continue as planned and we are striking in both Iraq and Syria."

A spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron - usually a staunch critic of Russia's - put it this way:

"The prime minister strongly encouraged (Turkish) Prime Minister Davutoglu to make sure that there was direct communication between the Turks and the Russians on this."

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop - one of the most outspoken critics of Russia in connection with the MH17 tragedy - said:

"We are concerned about the incident where a Russian aircraft was shot down in the Syrian-Turkish border area, and we ask relevant parties to exercise restraint".

Lastly, Obama himself, in a telephone conversation to Erdogan, mixed his support with a plain warning. According to a White House statement he said that

"(Whilst) US and NATO support Turkey's right to defend its sovereignty......The leaders (ie. Obama and Erdogan - AM) agreed on the importance of de-escalating the situation and pursuing arrangements to ensure that such incidents do not happen again."

It is impossible to read in these comments anything other than an implied - and in the German case a not so implied - rebuke of Erdogan. If is he after all he who has failed to exercise "restraint" by authorising his air force to shoot the SU24 down.

The West has not yet quite brought itself to abandon him. However he is now under notice to behave himself. If he fails to do so he risks finding himself on his own.

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Moscow Times
November 26, 2015
Russian Public Hawkish on Syria, Terrorism - Poll

Nearly half of Russians think that French authorities should respond to the terror attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, which left 130 people dead, by "stepping up its fight against IS and fostering international cooperation in combating terrorism," according to a poll by independent Russian pollster the Levada Center, the Kommersant newspaper reported Thursday.

This course of action was supported by 44 percent of respondents, with a further 41 percent saying that France should tighten up its immigration system. A third (33 percent) thought that some form of control over France's Muslim population was necessary to prevent radicalization.

"Humanitarian" measures proved far less popular, with 5 percent of respondents believing that France needed to review its Middle Eastern policy and halt its air strikes in Syria.

An earlier Levada poll, whose results were published on the center's website on Oct. 10, showed that 72 percent of respondents supported Russian air strikes targeting IS sites, with 33 percent saying they did so "without reservation."

However, 39 percent responded that Russian intervention in Syria was "highly likely" to lead to a drawn-out war resembling the one fought by the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Thirty-two percent deemed this outcome "rather unlikely."

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 #10
Moscow Times
November 26, 2015
Russian Tour Agencies Cancel Turkey Trips Amid Fury Over Downed Warplane

Turkey is a hugely popular vacation spot for Russians, almost 3.3 million of whom holidayed there in 2014, according to official figures.
Russian tour agencies have canceled flights to Turkey and suspended sales of new tours a day after the downing of a Russian fighter-bomber by the Turkish military, Russian media reported Wednesday.

The move is a blow to Turkey's tourism industry, which hosts millions of Russians each year, and follows recommendations from Russia's Foreign Ministry and tourism regulator not to travel to the country for safety reasons.

Turkey is a hugely popular vacation spot for Russians, almost 3.3 million of whom holidayed there in 2014, according to official figures. According to Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman, they contributed nearly $4 billion to the Turkish economy last year.

The deputy head of the Russian Association of Tour Operators, Dmitry Gorin, said Wednesday, "all tour operators are canceling charter flights and have stopped sales of tours [to Turkey]," according to news agency RIA Novosti. He added that there were no plans to evacuate those already on vacation.

A groundswell of Russian anger followed the downing of a Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber by an air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16 interceptor near the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey said the jet had violated its airspace while Russia insisted that the plane was on the Syrian territory.

On Twitter, the hashtag #boycottTurkey was trending on Wednesday. Gennady Onishchenko, a popular former health official now advising the government, announced that: "Every Turkish tomato you buy ... is your contribution to a rocket to shoot down our boys," RIA Novosti reported.

Following the incident, President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev have played up Turkey's links with Islamist groups and suggested that the country is dangerous for Russians.

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 #11
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
November 26, 2015
Russia-Turkey crisis: What do ordinary citizens think?
The shooting down of a Russian jet by Turkey's air force has left many Russians indignant and confused, while in Turkey the crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara has also become the hottest talking point. RBTH looks at social trends and speaks to ordinary citizens to gauge opinion in the two countries.
MARINA OBRAZKOVA, YEKATERINA CHULKOVSKAYA, RBTH

The reaction in Russia

Just a couple of hours after Russians were informed that a Russian bomber had been shot down by the Turkish air force on Nov. 24, demonstrators were standing in front of the Turkish Embassy in Moscow. By the evening a huge crowd had gathered.

On the following day similar actions were observed not only in Moscow but also in other cities: Kazan, Stavropol, St. Petersburg. In some places social organizations arranged the demonstrations, in others it was done by political parties and elsewhere people came on their own initiative.

Russian social networks flooded with harsh criticism of Turkey. Immediately after the incident someone hashtagged #VozmezdieNeizbezhno ("RevengeIsInevitable" - a phrase that Russian President Vladimir Putin used after the bombing of a Russian passenger airliner in Egypt) and #UdarVSpinu ("StabInTheBack" - this is how Putin characterized Turkey's actions).

By using another popular hashtag, #NeEduvTurtsiyu ("NotGoingToTurkey"), Russians called on each other to cancel their plans to visit the country (Turkey is the top destination for Russian tourists). Others were just worried that now they would not be able to see the tourist landmarks.

"Two-three years ago I thought, well, Egypt, but what's there to see there? It's closed now but it won't go anywhere. I'll see it sooner or later. And Turkey? Everyone's been there except me," wrote one young woman.

However, there are people who do not share the prevailing mood and say that they still want to vacation in Turkey.

"I'm preparing to go. If the military plane hadn't been flying over someone else's border, it wouldn't have been shot down. Have they forgotten how Russia once downed a Korean passenger plane [in 1983 - RBTH], mistaking it for a military one," wrote another web user.

The reaction in Turkey

For the second year in a row the only thing you hear on the streets of Istanbul are the words "Russia," "Russians," "Putin" and "Syria."

Mustafa Kaiya, from the Sehri Simit confectionery house in Istanbul's Sisli district, lays the blame for the incident with the Russian plane at the door of the Kremlin.

"The Russian government is to blame for everything," he said. "They were warned 10 times. Now big problems await Turkey and Russia. But the people are innocent. I've always had respect and admiration for the (Russian) people and will in the future."

Murat Koch, a pensioner, expressed suspicion about Russia's true motives in carrying out airstrikes in Syria.

"Why is Russia getting involved in Syria? Who is it bombing there? ISIS? I doubt it very much... We, not you, are flooded by thousands of refugees!" he said. "We've turned a blind eye to Crimea, we did not join the sanctions against Russia. Did you hear what Putin said yesterday? How can we be accused of supporting terrorism?"

'I'm not a supporter of the Erdogan regime and his policy in Syria," said another citizen, who did not give his name. "He thought Assad would leave, but everything turned out to be more complicated. Syria for us is a very sensitive issue. Russia says that it is striking ISIS but we don't know who exactly it is bombing. Everything is complex and ambiguous. But I hope very much that the two countries normalize their relations and avoid an open conflict."

Istanbul is home to several tens of thousands of Russians, many of whom are particularly distressed by the current situation. One of them is Alina, who was born in Russia but married a Turk.

"My husband and I are watching the news," she said. "We turn on a Russian channel. They're talking about the incident with the downed plane. I translate everything to my husband: who is speaking, what they're saying. Then, as a response, my husband explodes: 'It's all a lie! Turkey did the right thing! We were protecting our state borders.'"

"We had a big argument about this," she said. "It's already the second day that we're not talking. Even though my husband is not at all a supporter of Erdogan. It's a very tense period. It's unclear what will happen later. It's frightening and sad that it all happened like this."

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 #12
Russia Direct
www.russia-direct.org
November 25, 2015
Turkey's downing of Russian jet: Cool heads must prevail
The shooting down of a Russian bomber by the Turkish air force leaves no doubt that the crisis in Syria has become the biggest challenge to international security in decades.  
By Nikolay Pakhomov
Nikolay Pakhomov is a geopolitical risk consultant and an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). He is a commentator in a number of Russian and international media outlets. You can follow him on Twitter @nik_pakhomov.

It will take a while before there are enough facts to make conclusions about the recent incident in the area near the Turkish-Syrian border. However, one thing is already very clear: The actions by the Turkish Air Force have raised the stakes in Syria and the Middle East to the maximum level, threatening to undermine the entire structure of international security.

Was it a call, perhaps a wrong call, by a local Turkish commander or a calculated decision by Ankara? Was it a provocation? How will Russia respond? What is NATO's role? What about an international coalition to fight the Islamic State? Was this the first step on the road to nuclear Armageddon?  The whole Middle East is waiting nervously...

Tragic patterns in Syria

One of the iron rules of international diplomacy in this kind of situation is to calm down before making the next and potentially fatal move. Before proceeding one needs to understand the bigger picture: not only how the Russian bomber was shot down, but also the causes and repercussions of the incident.
We should all wish good luck to decision makers in Moscow and elsewhere in tackling this immense and very important task. It is safe to assume that tremendous efforts to gather and analyze information are currently underway. The results of this process will soon be revealed, but it is already obvious that this incident will have three types of consequences.

First, for the war in Syria, second for Russian-Turkish relations and third for relations between Russia and the West. Let's examine what we can expect from these three types of consequences.

Lately one could detect a tragic pattern happening in Syria: Once it seems that a situation could not become more complicated and dangerous, then an event occurs that demonstrates that the abyss of this war has no bottom. The same seems to be true following the incident involving the Russian bomber.

The Russian General Staff has already announced that Russia would be making several moves in Syria to change the way that air raids are conducted. First, all Russian bombers will be escorted by fighter jets. Second, the Russian cruiser "Moskva" (Moscow) will provide full air defense for the area at the Turkish-Syrian border.

Notwithstanding the small size of the Russian military forces in Syria, these kinds of measures will undoubtedly cause very serious problems for the Turkish air force, not only in cases of further attempts to attack Russian planes in Syrian airspace (this is what Russia claims happened on Tuesday), but more importantly in the case of a Turkish bombing campaign on Kurdish forces in Syria.

In general, the political stance of the Kurds has improved following Tuesday's incidents. In Syria they represent a serious military threat to the Islamic State and are the closest thing to "moderate opposition" that can be found there.

Even before the downing of the Russian bomber one could expect any day that Assad would start negotiations with Kurds in order to create a partnership to fight the Islamic State and to show international critics that political reconciliation in Syria is actually possible.

Now, the chances for such talks have increased. One of the perks Kurds could receive for their involvement is better military equipment to fight not only the Islamic State, but also Turkish forces.

One more tragic note after the Russian plane was shot down was the attack on the two surviving Russian pilots by Turkmen militants fighting against Assad. The Russian General Staff reported that no power fighting the Islamic State indicated that this area was being held by "moderate opposition" forces.

Nevertheless, some experts believe that these fighters enjoy Ankara's support. It is possible that the strike of Russian bombers against them might be the main reason for the attack by the Turkish air force. In any case Turkmen militants proved their "moderate" stance by shooting at parachuting Russian pilots, thus carrying out an outright violation of international humanitarian law.

Partnership goes sour

The next set of repercussions stemming from Tuesday's incident involves Russian-Turkish relations. It has already been announced that Moscow has ceased military cooperation with Turkey, but it is well known that during last several years both countries developed cooperation on various fronts, especially in energy. It is not a bad assumption to suggest that these projects will be curtailed until some understanding on the Russian bomber is reached.

Will it impact Russia's economy? There are no doubts that it will. Projects that supply Russian natural gas to Europe through Turkish territory will become especially difficult. However, it is important to keep in mind that Russia is working to increase energy supplies to East Asian markets. Now, decision makers in Moscow have one more reason to speed up the diversification of their natural resource clients.

However, Turkey still needs natural gas for its economy. The first obvious candidate to replace Russia as the main exporter to Turkey is Iran. Such cooperation, however, is impossible both from political and infrastructure standpoints. Politically, Iran and Turkey are on opposite sides of the spectrum, not only in Syria but also on many other issues.

What is more important is that there is no infrastructure for securing deliveries from Iran. Experts doubt that after years of internal troubles and international sanctions that Iran is capable of drastically increasing its export capacity.

We should recall that Russian specialists signed a $20 billion contract to build a nuclear plant in Turkey. It is hard to imagine how Turkey could nullify this contract without causing financial harm to itself. Turkey needs this nuclear facility.

The same pattern holds for any type of economic cooperation between the two countries: The essence of any cooperation is that it is mutually beneficial and curtailing it would bring harm to both sides. The question is, which side will suffer more. Whoever it was in Turkey that made the call to shoot down the Russian bomber seemingly posed this question.

The bigger picture

The bomber was shot down the same day that President Hollande and President Obama held talks in Washington to discuss forming an international alliance against the Islamic State. After the talks President Obama, aware of what happened in Turkey, noted that Russia might still be a part of this alliance.

Obama also mentioned that it was important that Russia and Turkey be in contact with one another to "take measures to discourage any kind of escalation."
In general the American response to the incident has been toned-down. First, it was portrayed as a matter not connected with the fight against the Islamic State and then Turkey's right to protect its airspace was highlighted. No accusations, treats or bellicosity.

There are no doubts that Turkey, Russia, the United States and NATO will collect enough evidence to find out what happened on the Turkish-Syrian border. The question remains, however, of what will be publicly acknowledged.

President Putin is known for being deliberate in his political actions. In seeking Russian retribution it is crucial if the actions of Turkish air force are seen as a Turkish decision or as a move coordinated with its Western partners. The latter might result in a new level of confrontation between Russia and the West.

It is important to note that throughout the Syrian crisis not all moves on the ground have been called by Washington and other Western capitals. Far from it. Sometimes, even when the United States was trying hard to change the course of events it eventually followed the "lead" of its supposedly lesser partners.

In any respect, the shooting down of the Russian bomber was the loudest possible warning for all reasonable players in the Middle East and beyond: the Syrian crisis must end. Only the future can tell if this warning will be heard.

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 #13
Wall Street Journal
November 26, 2015
Russia Takes Aim at Turkish Economy Amid Fighter-Jet Spat
Turkish officials reject Vladimir Putin's call for an apology
By JAMES MARSON and ANDREY OSTROUKH in Moscow and DION NISSENBAUM in Istanbul

Turkey's president on Thursday rebuffed Russian leader Vladimir Putin's request for an apology over the shootdown of a Russian warplane, as Moscow took aim at Turkey's economy, ordering tougher checks on its food imports.

Russia has reacted with fury to the incident and vowed to retaliate by clamping down on trade and business ties. As Russia ramped up its criticism, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed Mr. Putin's demands that Ankara apologize or offer compensation to Russia.

"I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us," Mr. Erdogan said in an interview on CNN International. "Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize.

Turkish and U.S. officials said the Turkish pilots warned the Russian planes 10 times in five minutes that they were approaching Turkey's airspace and that the requests to shift course went unanswered. The Turkish military later released recordings of the warnings.

But Mr. Putin repeated Russia's position that the aircraft was in Syrian airspace when it was downed, and insisted that Turkey had broken international law.

Turkey's leadership was "intentionally pushing Russian-Turkish relations to a dead end," he said at a meeting with foreign ambassadors, according to the Interfax news agency. "We have heard neither apologies from the high military and political level in Turkey, nor about compensating the damage, nor a promise to punish criminals for the offense committed."

So far, Russia's only action had been to ship one of its most-advanced air-defense systems to its air base in Syria. But on Thursday, Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov ordered tighter control on agricultural products from Turkey, including additional checks at the border and at production sites, saying some Turkish products don't meet Russian standards.

With a migrant crisis engulfing Europe, civil war in Syria and a proliferation of terror groups in the region, Turkey finds itself as a geopolitical hotspot. WSJ's Niki Blasina explains the key flashpoints, including Russia, the U.S. and the European Union. Photo: AP.
A Kremlin spokesman said the agriculture ministry's move wasn't an embargo.

"But due to increased danger and various extremist developments, naturally, additional checks are being made," Dmitry Peskov said. "It's completely natural, especially given the unpredictable actions in the case of the Republic of Turkey."

Russia's introduction of tougher inspections on foodstuffs frequently coincides with heightened tensions with the country affected, including a ban on wine from Georgia from 2006 and restrictions on various Ukrainian products in the last two years. Russia banned European food products last year in response to Western sanctions over Moscow's interventions in Ukraine.

The Russian Agriculture Ministry said in a statement that it analyzed Turkish food imports after consumers and industry associations raised the issues. The ministry found that 15% of Turkish agricultural products didn't meet Russian standards, he said.

There have been 40 cases since the start of the year where officials found traces of harmful and prohibited substances in animal products, and excessive amounts of pesticides and nitrates have been found in fruit and vegetables, he said.

Russia's consumer watchdog has already withdrawn more than 800 kilograms (1,800 pounds) of Turkish foodstuff from stores across Russia, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia could suffer an increase in inflation, already running around 15%, as Turkey is among the top suppliers of fruit and vegetables to Russia with a share of the market between 15% and 20%, Nomura bank said. Russian Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Oreshkin said he didn't see "radical risks" for the ruble and inflation from worsening relations between Russia and Turkey, Interfax reported.

Russia's imports from Turkey as well as from other countries has already shrunk substantially as the ruble lost more than 40% of its value against the dollar over the past year.

According to Russia's customs service, imports from Turkey, which accounts for 4.6% of Russia's international trade turnover, fell by 38.5% in the first nine months of this year.

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 #14
Moscow Times
November 26, 2015
Downing of Russian Sukhoi Bomber Was Predictable
By Matthew Bodner

The downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber on the Syrian border by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet on Tuesday marks the first serious clash between Russian forces and an external coalition involved in Syria's civil war - but it was a predictable event.

Turkey has been supporting rebel forces fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad since the civil war erupted in that country 4 1/2 years ago. While Turkey has given substantial support to the Free Syrian Army, it has largely focused on supporting Turkmen forces located just over its border.

According to Turkey, these Turkmen forces have been targeted by Russian bombing raids in its air campaign launched by President Vladimir Putin at Assad's request nearly two months ago, despite Moscow's insistence that its operation is aimed primarily at the Islamic State.

These conflicting interests in Syria set the stage for Tuesday's dramatic events. Turkey under President Recep Erdogan - a strongman leader with political instincts similar to those of President Vladimir Putin - has repeatedly warned Russian aircraft to steer clear of Turkish airspace while conducting raids in northern Syria.

Tensions in airspace along the border have been high throughout the conflict. In 2012, Syria shot down a Turkish reconnaissance plane, and a year later Turkey shot down a Syrian helicopter that allegedly entered its airspace and failed to acknowledge repeated warnings to leave.

In this regard, the downing of a Russian fighter jet should have come as no surprise. Since Russia began bombing in Syria, its fighter jets have reportedly strayed into Turkish airspace several times - prompting Ankara to repeatedly warn Moscow that it would defend its sovereign airspace.

"Russia's likely mistake was not to make a priority of keeping well clear of the border rather than deliberately intrude into Turkish airspace as a political gesture," said Mark Galeotti, an expert in Russian military and security affairs at New York University.

"I think it's more likely either that Turkey leapt at the opportunity when a plane strayed momentarily over its border, or else the [Su-24] bomber was just more concerned with the optimal attack run rather than the precise location of the border," he said.

Black Tuesday

The downing of the Su-24 fighter-bomber on the Turkish-Syrian border marked the first loss of a Russian aircraft since Moscow launched its aerial intervention at the end of September. While the plane's two pilots ejected, one was reportedly killed by local rebels during his descent.

The Associated Press news agency cited a local rebel leader, Jahed Ahmad of the 10th Coastal Brigade, as saying one of the pilots was fired on during his descent and was dead on arrival. A video later emerged online showing militants surrounding a dead pilot.

Later that day, while conducting a search and rescue operation for the downed Sukhoi pilots, a Russian Mi-8 Hind helicopter was forced down by gunfire from Syrian rebels and later destroyed by a TOW missile while on the ground.

Two narratives have emerged surrounding the aircraft's actions leading up to the incident. The Turkish government has maintained that the Russian bomber strayed into its airspace, and failed to respond to a series of 10 warnings delivered over a period of five minutes.

Though the Turkish government said Tuesday that it was not aware of the nationality of the intruding aircraft, it defended is actions as falling well within its publicized rules of engagement and a legitimate defense of its sovereign airspace.

President Erdogan on Wednesday said: "We have no intention of escalating this incident. We are only defending our own security and the rights of our brothers," Reuters reported.

Putin, in a series of harsh remarks delivered in Sochi during a visit by Jordanian King Abdullah on Tuesday, painted a different picture: Turkey stabbed Russia in the back by firing on a Russian bomber that posed no threat to Turkey, and likewise never got closer than 1 kilometer to the border.

The two sides are likely to continue arguing over this point, and data presented by both sides will back up their respective version of events. However, assuming the Turkish story adds up, radar tracks show the Sukhoi passed through a short strip of airspace very quickly - perhaps in just 17 seconds, a UN letter published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday claimed.

This suggests that Turkey took an opportunity to prove a point - that it was prepared to fire on a Russian aircraft infringing its airspace while on a bombing run in a region of Syria populated by Turkmen rebels, a group that Turkey views as their kin fighting in the civil war against Assad.

"I think it's important to note that yesterday's tragedy was not an accident, and I think both sides are to blame," said Yury Barmin, a Russian political and international affairs analyst. "[But], I am inclined to think that the downing of the jet was intentional, a signal that Erdogan sent to Putin."

Pyotr Topychkanov of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank, argued that Russia's harsh reaction to Turkey's actions on Tuesday reveals that the incident caught them completely off guard, despite the glaring differences between Russian and Turkish interests in Syria.

"Ankara has a totally different view on Syria. [Also], it has assets in Syria that have been seriously weakened by Russian and Syrian actions. ... I can't understand why the Russian ministries of defense and foreign affairs, as well as the intelligence community, didn't take this risk more seriously," said Topychkanov.

In this regard, Moscow may have miscalculated Ankara's willingness to defend what it views as its vital interests in Syria - which analysts said is viewed by Erdogan much the same way Putin has viewed Ukraine, and their responses to developments have been similar.

"It's getting clearer and clearer that Putin has encountered a side in the Syrian conflict with a line of thinking similar to his," Barmin said. "It's as if Putin has to figure out how he would have dealt with himself in Ukraine.

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#15
The National Interest
November 25, 2015
Russian Jet Down in Turkey: Misstep or Game-Changer?
The incident has forced all NATO countries, including the United States, to reassess their commitments.
By Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Nikolas Gvosdev is a contributing editor at The National Interest and co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests (CQ Press, 2013). The views expressed here are his own.

As we continue to gather more information on the shoot-down of a Russian aircraft by Turkish planes, the incident forces not only Russia and Turkey but all NATO countries (including the United States) as well as other regional players to reconsider their positions and assumptions. Over the coming hours, days and weeks, we will have a better sense of whether this will be treated as a tragic mistake or whether it will be seen as a game-changer that alters the trajectory of the Syrian conflict and Russia's relationship with the West.

In the immediate aftermath, whatever progress Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan achieved on the sidelines of the Antalya G-20 summit is now completely lost. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's trip to Turkey, which was designed to get the Turkish-Russian agenda back on track, has now been cancelled. The shoot-down may prove to be the final nail in the coffin of a losing four-year attempt by both Russia and Turkey to find a way to compartmentalize their deep disagreements over Syria from infringing upon a very lucrative economic relationship between the two countries. Putin's comments about a "stab in the back," and Erdogan's own clear statements that Turkey will not stand by any infringement of its airspace, suggest that a rapid move by both sides to offer apologies and to put the incident behind them seem to signal that this incident will continue to have negative consequences for the relationship.

This is also proving to be a critical test of NATO's commitment. Certainly, NATO countries, starting with the United States, are calling for de-escalation of the situation and for both sides to refrain from provocation. Beyond that, however, will NATO members unequivocally back all necessary measures to deter Russia from retaliation or from any incursions into Turkish territory? Or will the alliance fracture on this question, with some countries arguing that Turkey's own actions in Syria do not give it the right to call on the alliance for immunity? Given the growing uncertainty among some NATO members, particularly in the Baltic States, about the degree to which other alliance members would honor their treaty commitments should they get into entanglements with Russia, what NATO does in the coming days will be important for determining the future relevance of the alliance. It will also be important because with the potential for more incidents of this support miscalculations could easily spiral out of control.

The shootdown also calls into question French President François Hollande's vision of using the struggle against ISIS as a way to knit together a grand anti-terror coalition. Presumably, Putin will ask Hollande when they meet in Moscow on Thursday how Russia can take part in strikes against the Islamic State if France's NATO ally will be targeting Russian aircraft. In turn, this is likely to have negative ramifications for France's efforts to craft a UN Security Council resolution as the international legal basis for common action against ISIS-given Russia's past insistence that other rebel groups operating against the Assad government also be covered in any anti-ISIS mandate.

French officials were hoping, in the wake of the downed civilian Russian airliner over Sinai and the attacks in Paris, that Moscow would be prepared to shift its focus in Syria from defending the Assad regime to taking the fight to ISIS. There had also been indications that Moscow was cautiously exploring with Western diplomats, Turkey and Saudi Arabia the possibility of a settlement in Syria that would provide for the eventual departure of Assad from power. Now, Moscow may swing back towards Iran's preferences of further action to entrench Assad's control over the key parts of Syria that he needs for regime survival-something that Assad has started to do in recent days, with forces backed by Russian helicopter gunships and additional fighters provided by Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Over the last week, there was guarded optimism that the different players in Syria were beginning to search out possible compromises that could lead to a settlement of the civil war and a singular focus on ISIS. Whether this incident will be viewed as a tragic outlier, or whether it derails that process altogether, is still unclear. President Hollande's press conference in Moscow on Thursday may provide the critical answer.

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 #16
Wall Street Journal
November 25, 2015
Jet Downing Exposes Limits of Russian Force in Syria, Analysts Say
Su-24 aircraft, a legacy of the Cold War, has served mainly as air support for Assad's ground offensive
By THOMAS GROVE

MOSCOW-The downing of a Russian jet on the Syrian border this week and the deadly search-and-rescue mission that followed it exposed limitations in the modest force Moscow has sent to back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, military experts say.

In late September, the Russian military launched an air war on forces arrayed against Mr. Assad. The campaign suffered its first combat casualty on Tuesday when a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber that Turkey claimed strayed into its airspace, touching off a major international crisis and further ratcheting up tensions in the region.

The Su-24, a Cold War legacy aircraft that first entered service in the 1970s, isn't designed to face off with an interceptor like the U.S.-made F-16. Its main role, military analysts say, has been to serve as air support for Mr. Assad's ground offensive, carrying out bombing runs against the various groups fighting against the Syrian government.

Following the downing of the jet, Russia announced plans to escalate its capabilities in Syria by bringing in both a missile cruiser and an advanced S-400 air-defense system, warning both are capable of destroying any threats to Russia's operations there. On Wednesday, Russia resumed its airstrikes in Syria, hitting near the Turkish border even as both sides steered clear of further direct military confrontation.

Russia's Defense Ministry has said the bomber was flying just below 20,000 feet when it was hit by an air-to-air missile fired by the F-16, well above the range of the surface-to-air weapons believed to be in the hands of Islamic State and antigovernment rebels. The bomber wasn't being escorted by a jet fighter, suggesting the Russians weren't expecting a midair confrontation.

"There are some serious chinks in the Russian game plan," said Christopher Harmer, a former naval aviator and senior analyst for the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Since the beginning of Russia's air campaign on Sept. 30, Turkey has complained about Russian warplanes violating its airspace, with U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials saying Moscow was deliberately testing boundaries.

"The Russians went in with a lot of bluster and they actually-I think-intentionally violated Turkish airspace on a number of occasions just to see what the Turkish reactions would be," Mr. Harmer said. "The Russian activity there incited some Turkish reaction that the Russians weren't prepared for."

Russia has said that Turkey's downing of the Su-24 was a deliberate attack and that the plane was in Syrian airspace when it was hit.

"We have a large amount of confirmed information that it was an intentional act, planned," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, according to the news agency Interfax. "A few of our partners that contacted us yesterday said that it was an obvious ambush: They waited, followed and searched for a pretext."

The surviving crew member of the Russian bomber denied his aircraft violated Turkish airspace and said Turkish jet fighters issued no warning before firing. Turkey has said its forces warned the Russian plane 10 times for five minutes over radio channels before firing upon it.

State-run news agency TASS says Russia currently bases a fleet of more than 50 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters in Syria, a relatively light footprint compared with Turkey's air force, which says it has 858 war planes and helicopters in inventory.

Its move to bring in the missile cruiser and advanced air-defense system raises the prospect for more conflicts in the already crowded skies over the Middle East and, analysts say, offers a potential challenge to Turkey.

"If the Russians want, they can roll their mobile surface-to-air missile batteries right up to the Turkish border and say - you so much as cross into Syrian airspace and we'll shoot you down," Mr. Harmer said. "There's not much the Turks can do about that."

Analysts say Russia's operations in Syria are a far cry from the U.S. practice of combining surveillance planes and command-and-control aircraft to create better awareness of the airspace above and the battleground below.

Steve Zaloga, a senior analyst at Teal Group Corp., a defense consultancy, said U.S. military aircraft don't operate alone: Surrounding aircraft and ground systems feed information on borders and potential dangers to pilots in the cockpit.

"U.S. operations tend to occur within a network, and there is often information coming to the aircrew other than the data coming through the aircraft's own system," Mr. Zaloga said.

Mr. Zaloga said the Russian craft's entry into Turkish airspace-Russia says it was hit in Syrian airspace-could have been caused by a number of factors, including navigation malfunctions. However, European diplomats in Moscow say that Russia has maintained a policy, at least in European airspace, of buzzing other state's borders, especially NATO countries, to see how they respond to airspace violations.

Once the Su-24 warplane was shot down, Russia suffered further losses when a search-and-rescue mission went awry after the Mi-8 helicopter being used in the mission was hit by small-arms fire from the ground. The helicopter made an emergency landing in neutral territory, Russia's Defense Ministry said, where it was ultimately destroyed by a mortar round.

Analysts say Russia's military doesn't train as much as Western militaries to perfect its search-and-rescue techniques.

Dr. Can Kasapoglu of the Istanbul-based Center for Economic and Foreign Policies Studies, said open source videos of the helicopter mission showed shortcomings, including a failure to secure the Mi-8's landing area before it was destroyed.

"Training of search and rescue teams is very important, but the training of pilots as well to carry out a successful search and rescue mission is crucial," said Dr. Kasapoglu, adding that it was difficult to reach conclusions on the state of Russia's capabilities over one mission.

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 #17
The National Interest
November 25, 2015
Turkey Shootdown: Russian Air Power has Issues, but Campaign has Been Decisive
By Geoff Brown
Geoff Brown was Australia's Chief of Air Force for four years until his retirement in mid 2015. Prior to this, he commanded at all levels of the Air Force, including as the Commander Air Combat Group.  During Australia's 2003 contribution to the war in Iraq, he commanded all F/A-18 and C 130 operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

News that a Russian strike aircraft has been shot down by Turkey has again focused attention on Russia's air campaign in Syria, which began in late September. The Russians deployed a small but decisive air and naval force to side with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to protect his regime and, specifically, the city of Damascus.

While the Russian Air Force deployment to Syria has undoubtedly complicated the air operations of the US-led coalition, the coalition's significant advantage in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and its ability to use extensive air-to-air refueling assets, mean that its air forces can easily 'deconflict' (that is, reduce the risk of the collision by co-ordinating movements) their operations from those of the Russians.

The ability of assets like the RAAF Wedgetail, the US Air Force E-3, and other ISR aircraft to identify and classify Russian aircraft activity from the time they launch from their Syrian bases means they can be identified and tracked throughout their entire mission. If crews on board an  aircraft like Wedgetail see a potential for imminent confliction, coalition aircraft can be moved out of the way until the Russians complete their operations.

However, deconfliction is far more of a concern for the Russians than the coalition. While the Russians have deployed very capable Su-30 fighters to protect and enhance the situational awareness of their strike aircraft,  the Russians do not have the ability to put together an integrated view of their operating battlespace, as the overnight downing of a Russian Su-24 strike aircraft likely demonstrates. They have little or no idea where coalition aircraft and UAVs are operating, and have little ability to put together a coherent picture of US-led air operations.

On all missions, the level of Russian situational awareness would be significantly lower than their coalition counterparts. As well as Turkish air power, the US Air Force's F-22s would be a significant concern to the Russian Air Force in any confrontation with the coalition.

Russia's air campaign has been effective and decisive:

Nevertheless, Russia has waged an effective air campaign against forces opposed to the Assad regime. In fact, it could be argued that the Russians have shown a better overall strategy for the employment of air power than the US-led coalition.

In contrast to coalition air forces, Russia has been unconstrained by the legacy of 10 years of counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. The tactical micromanagement of each strike sortie, and a total lack of freedom of action given to coalition aircrew, have made it impossible for coalition air planners to put together a coherent air campaign to defeat ISIS.

The coalition's formidable capability is being significantly underused because of self-imposed constraints. Contrast this to the Russian experience; in less than seven days, the Russians were flying more than 60 sorties per day, a very high rate given the modest force Russia deployed. And in the execution of its air campaign in northern Syria against militant groups opposed to the Assad regime, the Russians have used air power decisively in a way the US-led coalition has not.

Russia's quiet military revolution:

While the use of warships and, more recently, strategic bombers to launch cruise missiles to hit targets in Syria is largely symbolic, with the intention to demonstrate Russian capability to the world, the October air strikes were Russia's first operational use of precision-guided munitions, and thus underscore Russia's quiet military revolution. This  transformation has been a result of far-reaching military reforms to create more professional and combat ready armed forces that can swiftly deploy abroad.

In the past, the Russian armed forces needed months to gear up for a military confrontation. They have now shown the ability to react quickly and strike without warning.

The first serious round of Russian reform started in late 2008 after the Georgian campaign, and concentrated on increasing the overall level of professionalism in the Russian forces. There has been reform of the education and training of Russian armed forces personnel and a significant reduction in the number of conscripts.

After the education reforms were put in place, the Russians concentrated on increasing the combat readiness of the force by streamlining the command structure and increasing the number and complexity of training exercises.

The third phase of the reform was to rearm and update equipment. Many Western analysts have concentrated on this phase and have been dismissive of Russian capability because it still remains a work in progress. In doing that, we have ignored the success of the first two stages, which have already given the Russians a far more effective and combat-ready military.

So while the Russians lack modern air-to-air refueling and ISR assets, they have shown a good grasp of how to use modern air power effectively to achieve strategic results. In many respects, Western analysts have dangerously underestimated Russia's reformed military capacity.

This piece first appeared in the Lowy Interpreter

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 #18
Russia Beyond the Headlines
www.rbth.ru
November 25, 2015
Moscow and Ankara facing test of political nerve
Bilateral relations between Turkey and Russia have been seriously damaged by the shooting down of a Russian bomber near the Syrian border by the Turkish air force. However, despite a history of uneasy partnership, both sides will realize that it is not in their interests to allow tensions to spiral over the incident.
SERGEI MARKEDONOV, SPECIAL TO RBTH
Sergei Markedonov is an assistant professor of the Foreign Regional Studies and Foreign Policy Department of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

The incident involving the Russian aircraft shot down by the Turkish air force will be a difficult test for bilateral relations between Moscow and Ankara. Until recently, politicians and experts viewed them as an example of success in improving relations between the former historical enemies.

Meanwhile, it would be wrong to consider the current problems as something which arose suddenly and for no apparent reason. Prominent Turkish expert Bulent Aras has described Turkish-Russian relations as a "competitive partnership."

Indeed, the views of Moscow and Ankara have not coincided on many political subjects, including both the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Georgia, whose territorial integrity has not been questioned by Turkish politicians.

A relationship based on pragmatism

However, the countries were able for a long time to narrow their differences through the development of mutually beneficial economic relations. It seemed that pragmatism would continue to overshadow the contradictions and debate on political subjects.

Moreover, the relationship between the last decade's leading Turkish politician Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the United States and the European Union left much to be desired.

Ankara was not happy about Washington's relations with the Kurdish movements in the Middle East, while the movement of the Turkish Republic toward European integration did not meet much enthusiasm on the part of Brussels. The parties were unable to reach a breakthrough on the issue of Cyprus.

In addition, the "Kurdish card" in Turkey also provoked debate within the EU about the advisability of bringing Turkey into the fold. Moreover, the Turkish Republic was the only NATO member country to receive the status of a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

In short, Russia and Turkey agreed to disagree on some issues, but did not cross the "red lines" and question the need for increased economic cooperation. This was evidenced by the preparation for the implementation of the Turkish Stream energy project, designed to reduce Russian dependence on Ukraine as a transit country for the export of Russian gas by circumventing it completely.

Revolution in the Arab world

However, it is not in 2015 that the logic of an "agreement to disagree" began to break down. The origins should be sought in the events of 2011, when the so-called Arab Spring came to the Middle East.

If Moscow saw this event as a dangerous challenge associated with the collapse of the secular state, the strengthening of Islamic fundamentalism and concerns about its export to the post-Soviet states and Russia itself, then Turkey saw it as a chance to return to the region, which Ankara for many years did not see as its priority.

Hence Turkish support for the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, a sharp turn to criticism of Israel and political support of Palestine, and the struggle against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Ankara has effectively made a claim for the Middle East as its sphere of influence.

As a result, the two Eurasian giants formed different political "lenses." In Syria, Moscow sees Islamic State (ISIS) and the collapse of the secular state as the main threat, while Ankara fears the strengthening of the positions of the Kurds and the Alawites, and the defeat of its "clients" who are interested in the strengthening of the Turkish influence in the region.

Finding a way forward

There is no doubt that the incident with the aircraft has jeopardized relations between the two Eurasian giants. Each has both national prestige and its understanding of the prospects of getting out of the current situation at stake. Of course, the situation will continue to change and refine itself. Emotions have reached a high point both in Ankara and Moscow.

But, firstly, the parties already have some experience of getting out of complex and almost deadlocked situations. Secondly, neither side wants to help third parties by weakening each other.

Thirdly, Turkey is well aware that in spite of its dislike for Assad, destabilization in the neighboring country may rebound on Turkish society itself. There is radical Islamist sentiment in the country, and its carriers are ready to fight against Erdogan, regardless of his relations with Russia. Even by spoiling them, he will not get forgiveness and support from these people.

All this provides faint hope that the parties will find some modus vivendi in this difficult new environment.

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 #19
Moscow Times
November 25, 2015
Putin Seeks Entente Cordiale With the West
By Vladimir Frolov
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government relations and PR company

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not the type of leader who wastes a geopolitical opportunity. This is his way of making foreign policy. As Center for Strategic and International Studies scholar Olga Oliker points out, "Russia does not have a strategy. While it has strategic goals, it pursues them primarily by seeking opportunities, rather than developing clear plans."

Faced with the need to shore up militarily Bashar Assad's faltering regime in Syria in the summer of 2015, Putin saw in this a broader opportunity to bring Russia back in from the cold, after months of Western isolation and pressure for Moscow's shenanigans in Ukraine, by casting its intervention in Syria as a valiant contribution to the war on terror.

Putin's "Syrian Gambit" aimed at transforming the relationship with the West on Russia's terms to regain Russia's rightful place as a global power. The Kremlin realized that it was getting stuck in Ukraine, where it could not re-establish Russia's geopolitical parity with the United States. For Washington to take Moscow seriously, Russia needed to reassert its role on a stage where vital U.S. interests were at stake and where Moscow's limited capability could make a global splash. Syria was a perfect fit.

The immediate rationale for Russia's plunge into Syria's bloody civil war was to save a friendly regime in deep trouble, forestall a Western military intervention, contain instability and the threat of Islamist terrorism away from Russia's borders, while teaching the West a lesson that regime change through democracy promotion in countries of interest to Russia would no longer be tolerated and even reversed by force if necessary.

Launching air strikes allowed Moscow to muscle its way to the center of global diplomacy on Syria, while turning the conversation away from Ukraine. It won Putin a much coveted bilateral meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the United Nations in September, and reminded everyone that Russia was more than a "declining regional power."

Yet Putin's ambition of relaunching the strategic relationship with Washington was rebuffed by Obama. In their bilateral meeting on Sept. 28 in New York, Obama refused to accept Assad as an ally against the Islamic State, while berating Putin on Ukraine and eliding geopolitical horse-trading. The White House thought the Kremlin had deliberately misled it with talk about war against the Islamic State, all the while planning its air campaign to support Assad's offensive against the non-Islamic State opposition. Putin was bombing Syria, but was not getting the West's acceptance as a full-fledged partner. Until the terrorist attack on Paris and the downing of the Russian airliner.

The Paris attacks forced France's President Francois Hollande to call for a "grand coalition to defeat ISIS." France has limited capability to attack Islamic State in Syria and has desperately appealed for help from its European allies, but received only token support.

President Putin has seized on this opportunity for a grand anti-terror coalition, directing Russian forces in Syria to cooperate with the French as "allies." He hopes to entice Hollande and other Western leaders into accepting Bashar Assad as an indispensable ally in the war on Islamic State, thus ensuring Assad's hold on power. And he seeks to leverage Russia's war assets in Syria into improving Russia's bargaining position with the West. Moscow does not want to directly negotiate Western sanctions relief for fear of being perceived at home as capitulating on Ukraine, but it hopes to whittle away Western unanimity on sanctions by casting them as "immoral" to maintain on an essential war ally.

Significant challenges temper the optimism for Russia's anti-IS alliance with the West. Mutual trust is scarce after Ukraine and Russia's bombing of anti-Assad opposition. Moscow's alliance with Tehran makes Western intelligence sharing too risky. Military objectives diverge, as Russia's primary war effort is against the non-IS opposition to support Assad, with strikes against IS targets intensifying only last week. Obama conditioned closer cooperation with Russia on Moscow's fully redirecting its strikes against ISIS - "He needs to go after the people who killed Russian citizens," - he said of Putin.

Another problem is that Russia views Syria as a strategic opportunity to challenge the United States and to demonstrate the recklessness of U.S. support for popular uprisings against authoritarian leaders. Moscow is driving home the point that a brutal dictatorship is your best friend against terrorism. It simultaneously seeks cooperation and confrontation with the United States to achieve different objectives.

A limited collaboration against IS is possible, but a new Entente Cordiale between Russia and the West is unlikely.

Islamic State is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.

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 #20
The Independent (UK)
November 24, 2015
Campaign against Isis: Is there any hope for military success?
Britain's policy in Syria and Iraq depends on two partners on the ground: the Iraqi army and the moderate Syrian opposition to Assad and Isis. But the former is weak and the latter barely exists.
By Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, presently, The Independent. He was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year at the 2013 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards.

Iraqi troops strike valiant poses outside Ramadi in 2014, prior to an operation to drive out Isis forces holding the city
Our enemy's enemy: Iraqi troops strike valiant poses outside Ramadi in 2014, prior to an operation to drive out Isis forces holding the city AFP/Getty
British planes may soon be bombing Isis in Syria as well as Iraq, but so far the British Government has produced a picture of political conditions in both countries that hovers somewhere between wishful thinking and fantasy.

The Government agrees that air strikes must be conducted in close partnership with ground forces, if they are to have a decisive impact. But the partners it has in mind are the Iraqi regular army, which is still a wreck after its defeats in 2014 and earlier this year, and the "moderate" armed opposition in Syria, which is so feeble that it barely exists. When the US tried to create one it ended up with just four "moderate" fighters - individual fighters - in Syria at a cost of $500m.

Yet the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon was this week claiming that our allies on the ground are going to be "moderate opposition forces in Syria who have been fighting the regime in Syria and resisting Isil [Isis]". He did not identify these elusive moderates, but the Syrian armed opposition is dominated by three extreme Islamic fundamentalist groups, of which the most powerful is Isis, followed by the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, a hard-line Sunni movement. The one place where moderate and secular rebel groups had some strength was in southern Syria between Damascus and the Jordanian border. But they are in disarray since they launched an offensive in June called "Southern Storm", which was beaten back by the Syrian army.

In Iraq, Fallon says that we are cooperating with the regular Iraqi army, which he claims is very different from the one that ran away last year. He says that at the time in June 2014, when 3,000 Isis fighters defeated at least 20,000 Iraqi army soldiers and captured Mosul, the Prime Minister of Iraq was Nouri al-Maliki, who ran a highly sectarian Shia-dominated regime. Fallon is encouraged by the fact that he has been replaced by a more inclusive government under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. But inside Iraq this new government is seen as even weaker and more dysfunctional than its predecessor. Its main source of authority is its control of Iraq's diminished oil revenues, but otherwise it has little power outside Baghdad. Though heavily supported by US air strikes, its best military units fled Ramadi on 17 May. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, commented caustically that "Iraqi forces weren't 'driven out' of Ramadi, they drove out on their own".

We have been here before: in 2003 in Iraq and again in 2006 in Afghanistan, Britain committed troops to conflicts which it made little effort to understand. The primary aim was to remain America's closest ally, regardless of the risks or the real situation on the ground. The outcome was humiliating failure for British forces based in and around Basra, Iraq's second largest city, who ended up being penned into their camp at the airport and ceding power to the Shia militias inside Basra.

Redeployment of units to Helmand in Afghanistan in 2006, with complete disregard for the politics of the province, was even more disastrous and led to 456 British service personnel being killed for no particular purpose. In Libya in 2011, Britain joined a Nato air campaign, supposedly to save the people of Benghazi, which turned into a war to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi as Libyan leader. Trumpeted as a success by David Cameron at the time, four years later Libya has disintegrated, devastated by war and ruled by rival warlords who plunder the country. Libya's collapse has helped destabilise much of North Africa, leading to hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees cramming into unseaworthy boats in desperate attempts to reach Europe. In Syria, the downing of a Russian plane by Turkey yesterday shows the danger of unforeseen events.

There is a pattern here, which Britain may be about to repeat by extending its air strikes to Syria and stepping up its war against Isis. It will be the fourth campaign Britain has launched in the wider Middle East over the past 12 years and all have ended badly. The biggest failure has been political rather than military. Yet, in the days since Isis attacked Paris on 13 November, all the talk in Britain has been about more money for the Army and security personnel, and not for the Foreign Office.

But the most striking feature of Britain's response to the growth of Isis over the past three years has been that it did not know it was happening. When Isis captured Mosul, the political section of the British embassy in Baghdad was manned by just three short-term diplomats, according a report by the House of Commons Defence Committee. For in all four of these campaigns, the over-riding purpose has been to be seen as a great power and, above all else, fight whoever the Americans are fighting.

This carelessness about political consequences carries the seeds of military defeat and would have astonished British diplomats of an earlier generation. "Political and strategic preparations must go hand in hand," wrote Sir Eyre Crowe, a famed Foreign Office Permanent Secretary more than a century ago. "Failure of such harmony must lead either to military disaster or political retreat."

It could be argued that British air strikes in Iraq, and potentially in Syria, will be limited in scope and therefore the impact on Britain will be small. But it is always dangerous to dabble in war - and that is just what Britain did in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya - because the response of the other side is unpredictable and may be disproportionate.

In the case of attacking Isis, it is important to take on board that its leaders see the slaughter in Paris as a great success. At the cost of losing between eight and ten suicide bombers and gunmen and spending $100,000, its name has echoed around the world. It may be execrated, but it has shown its strength as it did when it destroyed the Russian aircraft over Sinai on 30 October. This makes it all the more likely that British people will be the target of retaliation, with tourists being the easiest victims as they were in Tunisia. This is not a reason for modifying future policy, but it is worth keeping in mind that Isis is committed to retaliating against its enemies with suicide squads instructed to kill as many civilians as possible.

There is a further point to keep in mind about the American-led air campaign against Isis: it has demonstrably failed in terms of its original intention, which was to contain and if possible eliminate Isis. There have been 8,289 air strikes by the US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria in what is officially called "Operation Inherent Resolve", of which 6,471 have been conducted by the US. Regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose participation was much publicised when strikes on Syria started, have almost entirely disappeared from the scene and their planes are largely engaged in bombing Yemen. There have been 57,301 sorties in Iraq and Syria, indicating that most of the time pilots do not find a target and return without using their weapons.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt US commanders fervently believed at first that airpower alone could prevent Isis repeating its blitzkrieg victories of 2014. Unlike many wars, the exact moment this policy fell apart can be precisely dated: on 15 May this year, Brigadier General Thomas Weidley, chief of staff for Operation Inherent Resolve, gave a press briefing in which his message was upbeat.

He said: "We firmly believe Daesh [Isis] is on the defensive throughout Iraq and Syria, attempting to hold previous gains, while conducting small-scale, localised harassing attacks, occasionally complex or high-profile attacks, in order to feed their information and propaganda apparatus." They were words he soon came to regret: even as Weidley was speaking, Isis fighters fought their way into the last government-held positions in Ramadi and the city fell two days later - on 17 May - to be followed by the Syrian city of Palmyra five days after that.

It is worth looking a little more closely into the reasons for the loss of Ramadi, because Isis is essentially an Iraqi organisation that expanded into Syria in 2011. It holds big cities in Iraq such as Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah, while in Syria much of its vast territory there is desert or semi-desert, and the only city it holds of any size is Raqqa.

At the time of the loss of Ramadi, the Iraqi army was reckoned by informed observers to have only about 12,000 combat troops which could be used in battle, though it had thousands more who could man checkpoints or plunder the civilian population (the al-Abadi government had admitted to 50,000 "ghost solders" whose salaries were being paid to none-existent officers and defence ministry officials. According to Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, the senior US military officer in Iraq from 2013 to July this year, speaking in an interview with Reuters, the army now has five depleted divisions whose fighting capacity is between 60 and 65 per cent.

In an interesting sidelight on the Iraqi army rout at Ramadi, he says that the flight of government forces started when an officer in the Iraqi Special Forces withdrew his men because he was anxious about missing out on an official trip abroad. The sudden and unexpected departure of his unit led to a panic among other Iraqi soldiers who fled en masse, enabling Isis to capture the city.

Supposing the Iraqi army now has 50,000 soldiers, though this is probably an exaggeration, it is smaller than the Shia paramilitary forces that claim 100,000. The three biggest militias are Badr Organisation, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq and Ketaeb Hezbollah, all under Iranian influence, but well-trained and highly motivated. They are very popular among the Shia majority and find it easier to get recruits than the regular army, dogged by its reputation for corruption and failure. Moreover, there is no clean division between the army and the militias, since the latter largely control the Interior Ministry and at least one army division is said to report direct to militia commanders and not to the Defence Ministry.

In Iraq, Britain will therefore be acting in cooperation with an army that is no longer the strongest military force in Iraq. In Syria, by way of contrast, the British will be refusing to cooperate with the Syrian army, which is the largest military force in the country, and which is now backed by Russian air power. The Syrian opposition has always pretended that the Syrian army was not fighting Isis, though this is demonstrably untrue and the Syrian army suffered a string of defeats near Raqqa last year and again at Palmyra this May. But it was losing ground this year up to the moment when it was rescued by Russian air strikes and greater Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah intervention on the ground. It has been taking back territory lost to Isis in the east and al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham in the north. And on 10 November, it broke Isis's siege of Kweiris military airbase, freeing some 2,000 Syrian troops trapped there in its greatest success for two years.

But it is by no means clear that greater Russian and Iranian military involvement will do more than restore the situation to what it was before the opposition's offensives earlier in the year. Russian intervention is, in fact, somewhat less effective than the Russians claim and their critics denounce. The Russians say that they had 50 aircraft - though many will be helicopters - active in Syria and these were reinforced by a further 37 aircraft last week, though some of these are bombers based in Russia. This is probably not enough to break the long-term stalemate on the battlefield or to capture the rebel-held half of Aleppo. Likewise, much is made of greater Iranian involvement, but General Joseph Dunford, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that Iran has fewer than 2,000 troops in Syria and 1,000 in Iraq. As with the Russians, both the Iranians and their enemies exaggerate the extent of Iranian commitment to Syria.

There are other forces involved in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian Kurds have become the US air force's favourite ally over the past year and have maybe 25,000 well-organised fighters. They have taken half the frontier with Turkey, robbing Isis of entry and exit points. But the Kurds do not want to be used as cannon fodder by the US and Turkey is adamant that it will not allow them to advance west of the Euphrates. The Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga have also recaptured Sinjar in a well-publicised attack supported by heavy US air raids, but Isis had decided not to fight to the last man there.

Britain is becoming committed to a military campaign of exactly the kind that Eyre Crowe, the Foreign Office mandarin, warned against. Political and military preparations have not gone hand-in-hand, but have entirely failed to complement each other. In Iraq, Britain is seeking to cooperate with an army that is weak and defeated, while in Syria it will refuse to cooperate with the army which is the most powerful military force in the country. In the recent past such disharmony has produced failure and defeat. It could well do so again in Syria.

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 #21
Carnegie Moscow Center
November 25, 2015
The End of a Russian-Turkish "Golden Age"
By Pavel Shkykov
Pavel Shlykov is an analyst with the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University.

The downing of a Russian plane by Turkey is jeopardizing the strong business and political relationship built by Ankara and Moscow. The two countries' clash over Syria suggests that relations will get worse before they get better.

The shooting down by Turkey of a Russian warplane on November 24 closes the curtain on what has been a brief golden age in Russian-Turkish relations.
Traditional rivals for centuries, Russia and Turkey had recently identified a host of mutual interests, which enabled them to smooth over contradictions and improve political and economic relations. Turkish leader-now president-Recep Tayyip Erdoğanand Russian President Vladimir Putin forged a good personal relationship.

But the downing of the Su-24 jet on the Syrian-Turkish border prompted sharp language by the two strongmen, with Putin calling Turkey "an accomplice of terrorists."

The episode coincided with a shift in Turkish politics, caused by the recent elections on November 1. Erdoğan's Islamist party, AKP, which had been forced into a coalition government in June, scored a victory that enabled it to govern again as a single party.

However, the AKP fell just short of winning the majority in the Turkish parliament that it needs to call a referendum to change the constitution and achieve Erdoğan's dream of establishing a new presidential republic. Erdoğan evidently believes that if he can project the image of a strong political leader, he will not only improve his rating with the public, but also be able to win the votes of wavering parliamentarians from the nationalist party, the MHP.

This is one reason the government has stepped up its rhetoric about "defending the Turkic world," not only against the Kurdish militants of the PKK but also in its strong criticism of the Russian military operation in Syria. The Turkish authorities have said that they are defending their Turkmen "compatriots" on the other side of the Syrian border, who are allegedly being hit by Russian airstrikes.

The Kurdish question is even more key. For Ankara, the fight against the militant Kurdish PKK is as important, if not more so, than the battle against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The Turkish government has long resented Washington's de facto alliance with the Syrian Kurdish movement, known as the PYD.
Even though the United States still formally regards the PKK as a terrorist organization, Ankara knows that Washington views any attack by Turkey on the Syrian Kurds of the PYD-which is closely associated with the PKK-as a "red line" it should not cross.

Russia's military intervention in Syria was a new source of frustration for Turkey, not only because it helped to prop up Turkey's adversary, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but also because it aided the Kurds. Then, the aftermath of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris increased the possibility of cooperation between Russia and the West in the fight against the Islamic State and further deepened Turkey's worries that its interests were being ignored.

In this light, Turkey's appeal for NATO solidarity after the November 24 incident can be seen as a chess move intended to restore Turkey's influence in Syria. Turkey used its membership in NATO to characterize Russia's alleged infringement of its airspace as a challenge to the alliance as a whole.

The way Turkey played the NATO card was a blow to the personal relationship Erdoğan and Putin had established as the foundation of their countries' strategic partnership. Putin bitterly complained on November 24 that "instead of immediately establishing contacts with us, as far as we know, Turkey turned to its NATO partners to discuss this incident. As if we had hit their plane and not the other way around."

Over many years, a strong economic partnership worth billions of dollars has protected Russian-Turkish relations from political shocks. The two countries recently agreed to build the Turkish Stream gas pipeline to replace the defunct South Stream project. Russia is contracted to build a nuclear power plant at Akkuyu in southern Turkey. Russians provide a huge number of tourists every year to Turkish resorts.

This economic relationship had thus far enabled the two countries to overcome their differences on Syria and manage difficult episodes, such as when Turkey forced a Russian commercial plane bound for Syria to land in Ankara in 2012, claiming it was carrying weapons, or when Erdoğan spoke out forcefully for the rights of Tatars in Crimea.

The shooting down of the Su-24 is obviously much more serious. The political relationship is bound to suffer. Russia has declared that it is suspending military cooperation with Turkey. There are rumors that commercial projects may be cancelled. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called off a visit to Turkey. Saying that the threat of terrorism was "not lower than in Egypt," Lavrov warned Russian tourists against visiting Turkey as well and several Russian tour operators have cancelled flights there (even though this is the dead season).

These steps are for the short term and can be reversed through diplomatic efforts. But there is every sign that the underlying cause of the new downturn in relations-Russia and Turkey's escalating clash over Syria-is intensifying rather than diminishing.

The Russian General Staff has announced that it is increasing Russia's military presence in the region by deploying a Russian missile cruiser to the Syrian coast and sending fighter jets to accompany its bombers. That is also likely to increase the possibility of new incidents in the air over Syria.

In other words, all of the economic and political links that have been built over the past few years between Moscow and Ankara now suddenly mean much less in the context of their international clash over Syria.

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 #22
Bloomberg
November 26, 2015
The Turkish Wild Card in Syria That Russia and U.S. Both Need
Onur Ant, Selcan Hacaoglu, and Donna Abu-Nasr

Turkey just reinforced its role as a wild card in the Syrian civil war, and one that both sides of the conflict ultimately have to deal with.

After becoming the first NATO country in more than half a century to shoot down a Russian warplane, it sent the alliance scrambling to deescalate tension with Moscow as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to continue to protect his country's airspace. It was a reminder of how Turkish priorities for Syria, its southern neighbor, remain out of step as its unflinching opposition to Kurdish separatists and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad overshadows the fight against Islamic State.

"The U.S. and EU will react with a mix of public support for Turkey, but in private they will have deep misgivings over the drastic nature of Erdogan's action," Naz Masraff, the director for Europe at political risk consultants Eurasia Group, said by e-mail on Wednesday. "Erdogan's move will probably be viewed within NATO as a miscalculation."

The largest NATO military after the U.S., Turkey says it wants to get rid of Assad and Islamic State, but opposes backing Syrian Kurds to help do so. The European Union meanwhile is pledging to share the financial burden of some 2.2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey while Erdogan is pushing to create a no-fly zone across the border where migrants fleeing the war can be settled.

Diverging Plans

Turkey, the historical bridge between Europe and the Middle East, shares the longest border with Syria. It's key to resolving the conflict and also German Chancellor Angela Merkel's effort to stem the flow of migrants into the EU. Yet events haven't gone to plan for the government in Ankara.

Russia took the U.S. by surprise in late September when it started bombing Syrian targets, ostensibly to attack terrorist groups though also to support its ally Assad. Turkey slammed the involvement and warned Russia about encroachments on its airspace, while NATO said it had no intention of coordinating its own air campaign against Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Islamic State suicide bombers killed more than 100 people in Ankara on Oct. 10 as Turkey focused its military effort on suppressing Kurdish separatist group PKK. It's still Turkey's "number one priority," according to Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs in Beirut.

"If Turkey has to choose between containing ISIS and containing the PKK, it will chose to contain the PKK because it's a direct threat to its national security," said Nader.

Putin and Erdogan

This week's engagement of Turkish F-16s to intercept the Russian SU-24 came a little more than a week since Erdogan hosted a Group of 20 summit dominated by talks over the Syrian war and Islamic State in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. After meeting his Turkish counterpart, Russian President Vladimir Putin called him a "straight-forward, open person" though also a "hard negotiator" who wants a political solution to Syria.

The two countries are now posturing. The Turkish air force stepped up patrols of the border, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he suspects the shooting down of the fighter jet was planned.

It will be Turkey that ultimately determines how Syria emerges from war down the line, according to Kamran Bokhari, a lecturer of national security at the University of Ottawa, said from Toronto.

"Turkey is the main player in the future of Syria," said Bokhari. "The U.S. is relying on Turkey to manage Syria in the long haul. Though Turkey is very skeptical of playing this lead role, realities will force Turkey to play a much larger role as time goes by."

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 #23
www.rt.com
November 26, 2015
Erdogan: We'll continue shooting down violating planes

Turkey will open fire on foreign planes violating Turkish airspace in the future, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned amid a diplomatic crisis caused by the downing of a Russian warplane by the Turkish Air Force.

"If another violation of our aerial border happens, we can respond in the same way," he said. "The plane was shot down within the rules of engagement announced earlier."

On Tuesday, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet fired at and downed a Russian warplane conducting a combat mission in Syria. Ankara maintains the Russian Su-24 bomber crossed the border and remained in Turkish airspace for 17 seconds.

Russia denies any violations. It also rejects Turkey's claims that its military repeatedly warned the pilots of the Russian jet before attacking it.

"We still haven't heard any apologies from the leadership of Turkey, nor have we heard any proposal to compensate damages or to hold those responsible for this heinous crimes to account," said Vladimir Putin during an official address in Moscow.

Erdogan rejected Moscow's grievances.

"I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us," he told CNN. "Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize."

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told fellow members of his AK Party that he had personally authorized the rules of engagement.

"We have mentioned that we would take all the necessary precautions needed if these developments result in violation of Turkish airspace," Davutoğlu said. "The orders to my armed forces were given by me during a meeting."

He added that Turkey's policy towards interloping foreign aircraft "had been explained at the highest level. We gave all necessary warnings. We told the Russians that military aircraft may be attacked."

The incident has caused the worst deterioration of Russian-Turkish relations in decades. Moscow accused the Turkish government of staging a premeditated provocation.

Aggravating the rift is the death of two Russian troops in the incident. The pilot of the downed jet was gunned down by fighters of a Turkey-supported militant group as he was parachuting to the ground. And a marine was killed when a Russian helicopter sent to rescue the crew came under fire from the ground. The helicopter was damaged and forced to land, after which the abandoned aircraft was destroyed by an anti-tank missile.

Davutoğlu blasted Russian anti-terrorist operations in northern Syria, saying Russian airstrikes target civilians not terrorists.

"There are no terrorists there. Airstrikes in Bayırbucak cannot be justified by the fight against IS. We cannot turn a blind eye on the fact that civilians come under attack under the guise of fighting against IS. These attacks must be stopped," he said referring to the terrorist group Islamic State, which Ankara claims to be fighting against as part of a US-led coalition.

Russia insists there is a presence of foreign jihadist fighters in the region as well as elements of terrorist infrastructure. Moscow believes Ankara is shielding terrorist forces in Syria with the goal of continuing to smuggle oil across the border.

"Turkey's actions are de facto protection of Islamic State," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday. "This is no surprise, considering the information we have about the direct financial interest of some Turkish officials relating to the supply of oil products refined by plants controlled by ISIS."

The Turkish PM said Ankara wants to maintain ties with Russia despite the incident.

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 #24
Moon of Alabama
www.moonofalabama.org
November 25, 2015
Was The U.S. Involved In The Turkish Attack Against The Russian Jet?

"Erdogan criticized Syria harshly on Tuesday for shooting down the Turkish fighter jet, saying: 'Even if the plane was in their airspace for a few seconds, that is no excuse to attack.'

"'It was clear that this plane was not an aggressive plane. Still it was shot down,' he said.Turkey hardens military position after Syria downs jet." June 27, 2012

"A violation of one to two kilometers is accepted as "natural" given the speed of aircraft, the statement [by the the General Staff] said. This year's violations of Turkish airspace lasted between 20 seconds and nine minutes, which showed 'airspace violations can be resolved by warning and interceptions,' the statement said.

"Turkey could have downed 114 planes for airspace violations: Army." June 25, 2012

"Turkish fighter jets and military helicopters have dramatically increased their incursions into Greek airspace, according to a study based on data from the Greek military, forcing the cash-strapped Greek air force to respond.

"Turkey buzzes weakened Greece - In growing numbers Ankara's fighter jets test Greek territorial claims". - July 23, 2015

Turkey also regularly violates Iraq's airspace by flying bombing attacks against Kurds in north Iraq.

All this provides that yesterday's incident in which Turkey shot down a Russian jet was not a case of an ordinary airspace violation but a deliberate act to take down a Russian plane. The surviving co-pilot of the Russian jet insists that it neither flew through Turkish airspace nor was warned of an imminent attack. As I wrote yesterday:

This then was not legitimate air-defense but an ambush.

I am not the only one who came to that conclusion. Deep inside a McClatchy piece a "western" diplomat sees it as an "orchestrated" event:

"One Western diplomat based in Iraq, but with extensive experience in Syria and Turkey, called the incident 'brazenly orchestrated and inevitable,' but asked that the identification of his country not be used in the statement."

The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov also came to that conclusion:

"The downing of a Russian warplane in Syria by Turkey appears to be a pre-planned provocation, the Russian Foreign Minister said. Ankara failed to communicate with Russia over the incident, he added.

"'We have serious doubts that this act was unintentional. It looks very much like a preplanned provocation,' Lavrov said, citing Turkey's failure to maintain proper communication with Russia, the abundance of footage of the incident and other evidence."

Several NATO ambassadors will have had the same though when they admonished Ankara over the act:

"'There are other ways of dealing with these kinds of incidents,' said one diplomat who declined to be named."

The attack on the Russian plane was preconceived on November 22 when a security summit was held with the Turkish government under Prime Minister Davutoğlu and the Turkish Armed Forces. Davutoğlu personally gave the order to shoot down Russian planes. This, Turkey says, was necessary to stop Russian bombing of "Turkmen" in north Syria's Latakia near the Turkish border.

Many of the "Syrian Turkmen" fighting against the Syrian people are from Central Asia and part of the terrorist groups of Jabhat al-Nusra, Ansar Al Shams, Jabhat Ansar Ad Din and Ahrar al Shams. Uighurs smuggled in from China and fighting under the "Turkistan Islamist Party" label even advertise their 'little jihadists' children training camps in the area. The few real Syrian Turkmen work, as even the BBC admits, together with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Their leader and spokesman, one Alparslan Celik, is a Turkish citizen from Elazığ.

The Turkish claim of defending "Turkmen" in Syria is a sham. It is defending mostly foreign Islamist terrorists.

Whoever planned the ambush on the Russian jet miscalculated the reaction. NATO will not come to Turkey's help over this or the next such incident. NATO countries know that the Russian plane was hit within Syria. Russia will not be scared into drawing back. Instead it massively increased the bombing of targets in that area:

"At least 12 air strikes hit Latakia's northern countryside as pro-government forces clashed with fighters from al Qaeda's Nusra Front and Turkmen insurgents in the Jabal Akrad and Jabal Turkman areas, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"A Turkmen commander said missiles fired from Russian warships in the Mediterranean were also hitting the area, as well as heavy artillery shelling.'

Russian jets also bombed insurgency supply trucks (video) in al-Qaeda controlled Azaz, north of Aleppo and just some two kilometers from the Turkish border. They also bombed the Bab al-Hawa border crossing to Turkey. That is a big FU to Erdogan.

The Russian missile cruiser Moskva with its extensive air defense systems is now covering the area. Russia will officially deploy two S-400 air defense systems to cover all of north-west Syria and southern Turkey. Russia also has lots of electronic wizardry it can (and will) apply. The preparation of additional airfields is ongoing. There will be no outward military revenge against Turkey unless it crosses into Syria. The "safe zone" within Syria Erdogan dreams of would have to be won by defeating Russian forces.

The 4.5 million Russian tourists who visited Turkey this year will not come again. Turkish business in Russia, mostly in the building industry and agricultural products, will shrink to nearly zero. That the scheming to take down a Russian air plane may have negative consequences for Turkey suddenly also dawned to Davutoğlu who now pretends that we wants to make nice again:

"Turkey is not aiming to escalate tension with Russia, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Nov. 25, echoing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan following the downing of a SU-24 Russian jet the previous day.

"'Russia is our friend and neighbor. Our bilateral communication channels are open. But our security, as for every friendly country, should be based on the principle of respect under international law. It's normal to protect our national airspace,' Davutoğlu said, addressing party members in parliament."

And it is normal for Russia to defend its ally Syria. Against all enemies. By all means.

But back to Turkey's motive. The way this is played one might believe that this was a indeed a lonely Turkish idea to defend its immediate interests in Syria - the "Turkmen" as well as the oil business Erdogan's son has with the Islamic State.

But there is also a bigger game going on and it is likely that Erdogan has a new contract and Obama's backing for this escalation. James Winnefeld, the deputy chief of General Staff of the U.S. military, was in Ankara when the incident happened. The cooperation between U.S. and Turkish military and especially the air forces is quite tight. It is hard to believe that there was no communication about what was prepared to happen.

After the Islamic State attack in France President Hollande attempted to create a global coalition against IS which would include Russia and Iran as well as the U.S. led anti-ISIS block. But such a coalition, which makes a lot of sense, would have to agree to leave Syria alone and to help Syrian ground forces to effectively fight the Islamic State. It does not make sense to destroy the Syrian state and to just hope that the outcome would be something better than an emboldened IS or AlQaeda ruling in Damascus. That outcome is certainly not in Europe's interest. But a global coalition is not in U.S. or Turkish interests. It would end their common plans and efforts to overthrow the Syrian government and to install a "Sunni" state in Syria and Iraq as a Turkish protectorate.

The Russian jet incident decreased the likelihood of such a coalition. Holland, visiting Washington yesterday, had to pull back with his plan and was again degraded to parrot Obama's "Assad must go" nonsense. Obama feels emboldened and now pushes to widen the conflict in Syria:

"The Obama administration is using the current moment of extreme anger and anxiety in Europe to press allies for sharp increases in their contributions to the fight against the Islamic State. Suggestions include more strike aircraft, more intelligence-sharing, more training and equipment for local fighters, and deployment of their own special operations ­forces.
...
"While new contributions would be added to anti-Islamic State campaigns across the board, the attention is clearly on Syria, marking a shift in what began as an "Iraq first" focus when Obama authorized airstrikes in the region last fall.
...
"Obama, speaking beside Hollande on Tuesday, restated his insistence that Assad is part of the problem, not the solution, and that he must go."

The Obama administration is also preparing to install the Turkish dream of a "safe zone" between Aleppo and the Turkish border north of it.

"Among several coalition priorities in Syria, the United States has begun a series of airstrikes in an area known as the 'Mar'a line,' named for a town north of Aleppo in the northwest. There, a 60-mile stretch to the Euphrates River in the east is the only remaining part of the Syria-Turkey border under Islamic State control.

"The administration had delayed beginning operations in the area because U.S. aircraft were needed in operations farther east, and it has been uncertain that local opposition forces­ would be able to hold the territory if it could be cleared with airstrikes."

The increased Russian air defense and the likely increase of its deployed planes will make those "safe zone" plans impossible.

But Obama, in my conclusion, still wants to drag NATO into Syria and wants to assemble enough forces "against ISIS" to be able to overwhelm the Syrian government and its Russian protectors. If that does not work he at least hopes to give Russia the Afghanistan like "quagmire" in Syria he and other U.S. officials promised. The again increasing tensions with U.S. proxy Ukraine only help in that regard.

But there is even more to that plan. Just by chance (not) the NYT op-ed pages launch a trial balloon today for the creation of a Sunni state in east Syria and west Iraq. But that (Islamic) State is already there and the "containment" strategy Obama practices towards it guarantees that it will fester.

Obama continues his immensely destructive policies in the Middle East with zero regard to the all the bad outcomes these are likely to have for the people there as well as for Europe. One again wonders if all these action follow from sheer incompetence or from some devilish, ingenious strategic planning.

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 #25
The Independent (UK)
November 25, 2015
Turkey has spent years allowing jihadist groups to flourish - so beware its real reasons for shooting down a Russian plane
Turkey has no interest in the peaceful settlement to the conflict in Syria that world powers are negotiating. As Erdogan gets desperate, he will attempt to bring focus back to Assad
By Ranj Alaaldin
Ranj Alaaldin is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University and a Doctoral Researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he focuses on Iraq and the Middle East. He previously specialised in the law of armed conflict and the use of force.

Turkey is getting desperate. Under President Recep Tayip Erdogan and his party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), its policies toward the conflict in Syria over the past four years have been misguided and costly. When conflict broke out in 2011, Ankara mistakenly under-estimated the strength of the Assad regime and supported hardline Islamist groups seeking its downfall. In the process, Turkey also marginalised the Kurds and alienated regional powers like Iran.

Four years on, Assad looks set to hold onto power and his regime will be a central part of a transition plan, one that foreign powers were negotiating last weekend. Turkey's regional rival, Iran, is a key player which can no longer be ignored by the West. Not only does the pro-Assad alliance now have Russian support firmly on its side, but the international community is no longer focused on defeating the regime - instead, it is concerned with defeating jihadist groups like Isis.

The shift in focus is a significant drawback for Erdogan. Years of support for, and investment in, Islamic fundamentalist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria) and Ahrar al-Sham are about to go to waste. Ankara has played a significant role in allowing Isis and other jihadists to flourish in Syria and the region. Turkey has acquiesced to jihadist groups entering Syria via Turkey as well as their use of Turkey as a transit point for smuggling arms and funds into Syria.

The Kurds in Syria, meanwhile, have established themselves as a reliable Western ally and have created, in the process, an autonomous Kurdish region that has reinvigorated Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and across the region - much to Turkey's dismay as it continues a brutal military campaign to repress the Kurds.

In other words, Turkey has no interest in the peaceful settlement to the conflict in Syria that world powers are negotiating. As it gets desperate, Turkey will attempt to bring focus back on the Assad regime and reverse the losses it has made both in Syria and geopolitically. The decision to bring down the Russian jet is, therefore, likely to have had other political factors behind it - particularly since the jet, as far as we know, posed no immediate threat to Turkey's national security.

Domestically, Erdogan thrives on a climate of fear and uncertainty. This worked for him in the country's snap elections earlier this month, during which he regained the majority he lost in June after months of bombings, violence and divisive rhetoric.

Ankara's downing of the Russian jet may provide a useful diversion as it seeks to intensify its military campaign against the Kurds, particularly in the Kurdish-dominated Mardin province, where MPs were assaulted in recent days. Two days ago, Selahattin Demirtas, head of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) who shot to international acclaim in the country's national elections, survived an assassination attempt in Kurdish-dominated Diyarbakir.

These tactics will not be without long-term costs and will undermine the chances of peace in Syria as well as the West's effort to defeat Isis.

The West appeased and bolstered Erdogan in Turkey in the run-up to the country's elections, with the aim of securing a deal with Ankara on the refugee crisis. It may now regret that. Erdogan is not only likely to drive a hard bargain but he may also walk away.

He has never cared much for the EU and has only sought engagement with the West when under pressure at home. But Turkey is not an indispensable ally and should not be considered as such. Unless the West starts to seriously exert pressure, Erdogan will have little incentive to stop his damaging policies.

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 #26
www.rt.com
November 26, 2015
What Turkey's attack on Russian aircraft says about MidEast geopolitical dynamics
By Catherine Shakdam
Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others.Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia's Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam

Whose war on terror are Western powers fighting? As Russia saw its plane and its men disappear in a cloud of smoke, it is really the underbelly of radicalism and radicals' patrons' agenda which was brought to light.

November so far has been a trying month, a month of tragedy, heartbreaks and fear ... from ISIL targeting Russia, Lebanon, Syria, and Paris to Turkey's downing of a Russian jet over Latakia in Syrian territory, terror has dominated the global narrative, darkening our future with talks of war.

Make no mistake: Turkey's actions towards Russia are tantamount to a declaration of war. As it stands, Moscow could quite legitimately retaliate against Ankara, all within the boundaries of international law. But Russia is not the United States! Russia does not simply smite the hands of its enemies - unlike most; Russia understands that if wars are easily started, they almost never serve those powers engaged in them. That is not to say however that the 'Great Russian Bear' will simply look on as its people are put in the line of fire; only that national interests are best served through clever leadership, not brutal force.

Peace is not built on blood but through cooperation, and stability is only ever achieved through alliances and common interests, not fear of oppression. Those are the policies Moscow has carried for the past decade or so, and those are the fundamentals Russia has sponsored where neocons have all but spat lead at the world by way of crisis resolution.

In that sense Turkish President Recep Erdogan profoundly misplayed its cards in this new thaw against Moscow. President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to get drawn in a game of military tit-for-tat against Ankara.

And if Erdogan imagined for a second that its membership of NATO would shield him from any political or military repercussions, the past 48 hours must have proven indeed disappointing. Very much alone in the storm he created, no Western "allies" came to whisk Erdogan on a white horse. And yes US President Barack Obama did indeed assert that Turkey had every right to defend its airspace, arguing that Russia ought to be more careful while targeting ISIL, but that's political lip-service, not an undying promise of support, come what may.

Turkey is only ever really a member of NATO when it suits NATO! I believe Israel shooting at Turkey's flotilla near Gaza in 2010 highlighted those double standards.

Miscalculations aside, what did Turkey hope to achieve by downing one of Russia's planes?

While there is little doubt in my mind that Turkey did not act on a simple impulse, or even out of genuine fear that its sovereignty had been threatened - those details will surely surface in due time - the real story behind this tragedy stands beyond a simple territorial spat in between two regional superpowers.

Let me put it this way - for a state to risk war the stakes must be rather high.

Allow me to point out to what we already know for certain before delving in any further.

To begin with Turkey and other Western powers' claims that Russia had been targeting so-called civilian areas in Latakia were debunked by a video published by America's "moderate militias" featuring one of the fallen Russian pilots - first lie. As Marwa Osman postulated in her comments to RT, those men on the ground do not exactly scream civilians.

Then, President Obama came out with this quote: "They [Russians] are operating very close to a Turkish border, and they are going after moderate opposition that is supported by not only Turkey but a wide range of countries" ... another lie. This one sentence essentially confirms that Western powers have colluded with radicals to further their agenda in the region - but not only that. It also lifts the veil on Turkey's dealings in the Latakia region - home to ISIL contraband oil operations.

We know that the Latakia region is crawling with armed militants in league with the likes of al-Nusra, ISIL and other terror denominations. We also know that Latakia has been an important financial stronghold of several oil and gas fields remaining under militant control. Finally, and this is a big one, Latakia is a geostrategic goldmine in that it offers direct access to Turkey, thus making the transport of men, weapons, and contraband more than just a little convenient.

This vein in between Turkey and ISIL is worth millions, if not billions of dollars - notwithstanding the fact it offers political opportunity.

Now can you see why Turkey's attack was not out of sorts? Turkey lashed out at Russia because Russia hit a sensitive nerve.

If you look deeper, Erdogan's knee-jerk reaction to President Putin's advances in Syria stands testimony to Moscow's successes against ISIL. So what if Russia actually stumbled upon one very Turkish smoking terror gun. What if Latakia held the keys to ISIL's "invisible patrons"?

Those are the questions Moscow will undoubtedly demand the answers to, especially now that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed at a press conference that "evidences suggest that the downing of the place was pre-planned."

Another aspect of this crisis needs to be considered when assessing all implications.

An attack on Russia could really serve an alternative political agenda.

Consider this: for every day that Russia and Syria are eroding the terror networks, for every day that civilians return to their homes, the United States and its Western partners are losing both political and military credibility.

Within this logic and in view of past manipulations, would it not be plausible to assume that Turkey aimed to shift the media narrative away from the war on terror and back onto the old East versus West cold war mantra?

After all if the public were to live in fear of WWIII, terror would most likely take a back seat, allowing for a media re-calibration.

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 #27
Valdai Discussion Club
November 26, 2015
TURKEY HAS ANOTHER AGENDA IN SYRIA
By Alexander Rahr
Alexander Rahr is Research Director, German-Russian Forum.

Turkey in the fight against international terrorism in any case supports certain anti-Assad formations and will continue to support them now more openly than ever before. Conflicts will continue to grow.

It turns out, that the Russian Su-24 aircraft was shot down not in Turkey, but on the Syrian territory. It is clear now, that Turkey has another agenda in Syria, and in the Middle East as a whole, particularly referring to the so called fight against international terrorism.

Turkey considers Syria as its zone of influence. Ankara also wants to see it as part of the former Ottoman Empire and is sure that has more rights to decide the fate of the region than Russia, which came from the outside.

However, Turkey does not have enough military power and logistics in order to influence directly on the situation and restructuring in Syria. But in any case Turkey will do it by indirect means. Erdogan made an important statement that he considered the ethnic Turks who live in the north of Syria in the border areas with Turkey, where the Russian aircraft was shot down, to be his brothers and sisters.

That means that Turkey in the fight against international terrorism in any case supports certain anti-Assad formations and will continue to support them now more openly than ever before. Turkey needs to remove Assad and build a completely different regime, which will focus not on Iran and Russia, but on other powers, including Saudi Arabia. So conflicts will continue to grow.

There is a chance that reasonable heads of NATO will be able to start some process of reconciliation between Turkey and Russia, but for today it seems impossible. Anyway, NATO can act as a mediator. I expected harsher tones against Russia at the NATO meeting in Brussels. They did not follow. Technically, symbolically, NATO was on Turkish side, but at the same time it sent a clear signal to Turkey not to repeat such an incident.

NATO, at least majority of the NATO members, especially Germany and France, understand, that at first common enemy must be defeated - ISIS, which occupies a large parts of Syria and Iraq. ISIS must be cut out from trade with other countries, including oil, first of all with Turkey and Iraq. This should be done by military means, because ISIS with its attacks against France and Russia declared war against the West and Europe. And what will happen in Syria, who will be there in power, distribution of influences are side issues. They will become very important after the defeat of ISIS. I hope, that reasonable minds in NATO will act in order to form, at least temporarily, a common alliance against ISIS and will act together. ISIS is the real winner from the incident with Russian aircraft on the Turkish-Syrian border.

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 #28
Atlantic Council
November 24, 2015
Russia Not a Reliable Partner in Fighting Terrorism
BY STEPHEN BLANK
Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.   

In the wake of recent terror attacks in Paris, President François Hollande has called for Russian and American cooperation against ISIS, joining many other policymakers who have voiced the need for cooperation between Russian and American intelligence agencies against Islamic terrorism. Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged his generals to treat French forces as "allies." On November 20, Russia was uncharacteristically helpful, backing France's UN Security Council resolution, which urges countries to take "all necessary measures" against ISIS. The Russian defense ministry posted a video showing Russian pilots writing "For Paris" on bombs intended for Syria.

But before any such cooperation becomes a reality, it is important to think seriously about whether it is merited. And once we examine Russia's actual record concerning terrorism, the basis for such cooperation evaporates.

Admittedly, Russia has been a victim of terrorism and remains a target. Nonetheless, Putin's regime has itself freely employed terrorism in the past. The 1999 bombings of Moscow apartments that preceded the Chechen war are widely believed to have been the work of the FSB under Putin's leadership. And since 2014, Russian-led forces have undertaken numerous terrorist bombings in Kharkiv and Odesa.

Additionally, through Iran and Syria, its proxies, Russia is a principal purveyor of arms to Hamas and Hezbollah. Indeed, two days after the attacks in Paris, Russia reaffirmed its earlier position that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorists. In other words, Russia uses terrorism as a legitimate weapon with which to advance its interests. When it comes to Middle Eastern terrorists, it reserves for itself the right to determine who is "good" or "bad." In fact, Moscow facilitated the movement of terrorists from the North Caucasus to Syria and Iraq, thus "exporting" its terrorist problem to those countries only then to intervene against them to assert its antiterrorist credentials.

Furthermore, Russia has not shown itself to be a reliable partner in anti-terrorism campaigns. Russia's recent attacks in Syria have not, for the most part, been directed against ISIS. Instead, Moscow has targeted pro-Western opponents of President Bashar al-Assad's rule, causing over 120,000 Syrians to become refugees.

Similarly, its past approach to intelligence cooperation with the United States is hardly a basis on which to build in the future. For example, when US authorities made inquiries to Russian intelligence agencies about the Tsarnaev brothers, who were responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, those agencies stonewalled US investigators. Considering that those agencies and their leaders believe that the United States is Russia's principal enemy, there is little basis for believing that genuine intelligence cooperation is likely or will be effective.

These statements urging cooperation between Russia and the United States confirm that in the wake of mass terror events, too many responsible policymakers or commentators lose their reason and are, in fact, terrified. This, after all, is what Vladimir Lenin (who systematically employed terror) meant when he observed that the purpose of terrorism is to terrify.

But it also testifies to the abiding unwillingness or inability of many elites to think seriously about the challenges Russian policy presents to the West. There is little doubt that Putin has exploited the attacks in Paris to present Russia as an indispensable power in the war against terrorism, at a time when it is not primarily targeting terrorism in its combat operations in Syria. This is no basis for a strong, effective operation.

Indeed, Moscow's real objective is to force the West to give up on trying to isolate it in retaliation to ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, and to use the possibility of "cooperation" in an anti-terrorist campaign to induce the West to accept Moscow's gains and claims vis-a-vis Ukraine. But an anti-terror coalition whose purpose, intended or not, is to legitimize war and terrorism has no basis for existing and would be opposed to American interests. It cannot be allowed.

When it comes to terrorism, we should take to heart the observation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that one cannot distinguish between good and bad terrorists. Russia cannot run with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen, while simultaneously joining with the West to hunt them and the Sunni terrorists of ISIS. And we should demand of Western pundits and policymakers that they think more seriously and soberly about the real challenges that Russia and Putin present to us.

Harvard historian Niall Ferguson wrote years ago that Russia is the only power that has no vested interest in the stabilization of the Middle East. Unfortunately, its recent behavior in the Middle East confirms the validity of Ferguson's observation. And its pretense that it is a genuine partner in an anti-terrorism alliance has as much credibility as its previous guarantees to its neighbors and partners. While ideally such an alliance would be eminently desirable, strategy must be founded on a real, factually-based foundation. And Russian cooperation is simply not part of that foundation.

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 #29
Irrussianality
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com
November 24, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
IMPERIAL GAMBLE
By Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history.

Two years ago this week, protests began in Kiev against the government of Viktor Yanukovich. Their result has been the dismemberment of Ukraine, a war in Donbass, and a series of economic sanctions levied by Western powers against the Russian Federation. In discussing Western responses to the Ukrainian crisis, journalist Marvin Kalb remarks in his new book Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2015) that, 'What was not done was for high-level policymakers to study, if only briefly, the long and intricate history of Russian-Ukrainian relations. ... In all this history, Ukraine, as Russia's "little brother", lived in a close but uncomfortable and contentious relationship with its "big brother". One always was tied to the other, a record of intertwined interconnections.'

Kalb's book attempts to make up for this deficit by charting the history of Russia and Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus through to today, and then seeking to explain why Russia has acted the way that it has, and what all this might mean for the future. In principle, this is quite a good approach. Unfortunately, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Imperial Gamble is really two books combined into one: first, a history of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship; and second, an analysis of contemporary politics. Given that it condenses 1,000 years into about 100 pages, the former is inevitably very superficial. It is also somewhat simplistic. For instance, Kalb claims (p. 39) that under the Mongols, Russia 'slumbered in darkness ... its culture ... virtually extinguished,' which ignores the flourishing of Russian monasticism, the rise of Muscovy, and many other developments of the era.

When it comes to later periods, Kalb's account sometimes slips from simplistic to inaccurate. Kalb claims (p. 83), for instance, that 'Stalin, in a mad moment, also considered the wholesale deportation of all Ukrainians. But, in February 1956, Khrushchev ... disclosed that Stalin could not give the order, "because there were too many of them".' Khrushchev did say that, but he was cracking a joke at Stalin's expense, not saying that Stalin had actually 'considered the wholesale deportation of all Ukrainians.' I know of no evidence that he had. And coming to the post-Soviet era, Kalb writes (p. 116) that Ukraine has 'survived ... relentless pressure from Moscow' since 1991. Yet, for years Russia subsidized the Ukrainian economy with cheap gas, at a cost to Russia of tens of billions of dollars. This was hardly 'relentless pressure'.

Nor are these the only examples. There are a number of little errors of fact. For instance, on page 84, Kalb refers several times to Ukrainian nationalist Dmytro Donstov, when the man's name was Dontsov. And on page 85, he says 'In June 1942 his [Andrei Vlasov's] army division was decisively defeated', but Vlasov wasn't a divisional commander, he was an army commander (2nd Shock Army). 'In late February 2014, hundreds of demonstrators were killed in Maidan', Kalb writes (p. 231). In fact, the total death toll was about 130. He similarly exaggerates the scale of the Bolotnaya protests against Vladimir Putin in late 2011 and early 2012, the largest of which was about 60,000 strong, writing (p. 224) that Putin 'had seen hundreds of thousands of disgruntled Russians demonstrating in Moscow against him.' One might argue that these are not important details, but they make one doubt Kalb's knowledge and the extent of his research.

In other cases, the errors aren't so minor. For instance, Kalb says (p. 160) that in April 2014, 'pro-Russian rallies popped up in Donetsk, Kharkov, Luhansk, Mariupol, and even the southern port city of Odessa, instigated by Moscow and organized by Russian special forces.' While others have also claimed (incorrectly in my view) that Russian troops instigated the uprisings in Donbass, the idea that Russian special forces were active as far as Kharkov and Odessa is quite unsubstantiated.

Kalb also muddles up his timelines to produce a misleading narrative. 'At the last minute', he writes (p. 139), 'Yanukovich changed his mind. He refused to sign the EU agreement. ... Days later, an elected president fled in terror'. But it wasn't 'days later', it was three months later. Then on page 143, Kalb says: 'On occasion, angry demonstrators threw firebombs at the police, and the police responded with gunfire. Pictures of the dead and wounded further inflamed passions. On December 6, as though to break the cycle, Putin summonded Yanukovich to Sochi.' In fact, the first deaths didn't occur until 22 January, after and not before the 6 December meeting. In another confused timeline, Kalb (p. 175) describes fighting in August as the Ukrainian Army closed in on Donetsk, and then mentions the rebel Vostok battalion, saying that 40 of them, including 33 Russians, were killed 'in a major battle near the rebel capital'. But this battle wasn't in August, it was in May. So Kalb has put facts about one time in the middle of a description of another time. Then, he writes (p. 179) of the rebels parading prisoners in Donetsk 'during the Minsk negotiations', but the parade was on 24 August and the negotiations on 26 August. The events weren't simultaneous. Again, one might say that the error is a minor one, but it is sloppy.

Thrown in with all this are a bunch of overstated denunciations of Putin, who is described as 'cunning, manipulative, and ultranationalistic' (p. 2), and as running an 'ayatollah autocracy' (p. 24). Putin, writes Kalb (p. 140), seems 'in both style and action, to blend Stalin with the worst of tsars'. 'Putinism may be one of the bleakest of modern autocracies', he says, adding that Putin has 'an ever-expanding ego' (p. 197). In addition, Kalb regularly states that 'Putin believes this' or 'Putin wants that', as if these were provable facts, without ever explaining how he knows these things. Putin 'has bought into the myth that Russia is again a superpower,' we are told (p. 224-5), 'This is his guiding vision ... and it inspires his policy and strategy. ... He is convinced that only an authoritarian, ultranationalist regime can protect Russia from its enemies.' Perhaps all this is true, but we need more than Kalb's bald assertions to prove it.

Oddly, though, after denouncing Putin at every available opportunity, Kalb suddenly abandons the moralizing tone and becomes a hard-headed Realist, and concludes by in effect telling Ukraine and its Western allies to give Putin what he wants. 'There is no escaping history,' he writes (pp. 219-221), 'Ukraine's fate has been enmeshed with Russia's. It always has been, and probably always will be. ... Ukraine is the junior partner. Therefore, any realistic solution to the current crisis must first satisfy the interests of Russia and then those of Ukraine. ... If Ukraine is to survive ... then it must first strike a political and economic deal with Russia.' 'Ukraine's future is linked to Russia's,' Kalb continues (p. 244), before telling readers (p. 248) that, 'We should encourage Ukraine and Russia to negotiate a realistic modus vivendi between them, aware that Russia, by virtue of its power position, is likely to get the better of the deal. ... This is not the time for dangerous games of chicken with Russia.'

In short, Kalb appears to be saying that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine, and that its 'ultranationalist' leader is a serious danger, but that Ukraine should accept that it is the weaker than Russia and appease it. Somehow, I doubt that many readers will accept this juxtaposition.

There are books I disagree with which I nonetheless think are worth reading. This isn't one of them.

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