Battle for Syria’s Aleppo: New Dawn, or Prelude to the Worst?


Syrian government forces have al-Nusra militants surrounded in Aleppo. In cooperation with the Russian military, three humanitarian corridors have been established to let civilians and surrendered militants escape. Radio Sputnik’s Brian Becker talks the importance of the situation with political analyst Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich.

Asked for her opinion of the strategic importance of these developments, Sepahpour-Ulrich called Aleppo a "terrorist stronghold," pointing out that, in her view, whomever engages in a fight that takes innocent lives is a terrorist, rather than the "opposition."

"It would really be a game changer if… the Syrian government with its allies, which is Russia, should succeed in [taking the city]," she said.

US military presence is used to support local terrorists, Sepahpour-Ulrich argues, rather than governments, in order to create instability, which will allow the US to make its mark on the ground.

At the same time, however, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is gaining in popularity among civilians, she said. This is likely to lead to the failure of terrorists. And if those terrorists, whom Sepahpour-Ulrich calls "the United States' mercenaries" fail, the US might resort to aerial bombings and try to turn Syria into a "failed state," despite it's being backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

"I don't think the United States will give up just because they were defeated in Aleppo," she said. "They will continue with [their plan of] regime change… They already invested too much time and money and their reputation."

Sepahpour-Ulrich insists that, even though the retaking of Aleppo will be a "mile boost" for Assad, nobody should "for a moment" think that the worst of the war is behind us.






The Mi-8 transport helicopter was shot down over the Idlib province on Monday, killing all five passengers, which included two officers and three crew members. According to General Sergey Rudskoy “The helicopter was hit from the ground in an area under control of the armed units of Al-Nusra Front terrorist group and the troops of the so-called ‘moderate opposition’ who joined them.”


Surprisingly, the helicopter was not on a military mission. It was returning to a Russian air base at Khmeimim after delivering humanitarian supplies to the city of Aleppo. The helicopter was operating with the Russian Reconciliation Center at the air base, which is responsible for negotiating peace talks between the Syrian government and some of the moderate opposition groups, as well as delivering humanitarian aid to civilians.

While the West is sure to claim that this is Russian propaganda, and that the aircraft was really on a military supply run, there is some evidence to suggest that the Russians are telling the truth. A partially burned ID cardshowing a picture of a blonde woman was found in the wreckage by militants on the ground. Clearly, this was no ordinary military flight.








A curious thing in the Western media this weekend is how little coverage is being given to a momentous victory unfolding in Syria. The Syrian Arab Army and Russian forces are about to close the final chapter in the five-year war – and the Western media don’t seem to want to know about it.

Indeed, far more media coverage is given to Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the Democrat’s presidential candidate. While Clinton was declaring to her party’s convention how she would wipe out Islamist terrorists in the Middle East, the Syrian army and its Russian allies were actually getting on with that very job.


Syria’s northern city of Aleppo – which was the country’s biggest city before the onset of the war in 2011 – is about to be fully retaken by the Syrian army, supported by Russian air power. Humanitarian corridors have been created to allow civilians and surrendering fighters to escape before the final assault begins on anti-government militias holed up in the east of the city.

What Syrian and Russian forces are about to achieve in the recapture of Aleppo is nothing short of a historic victory. It is not just the symbolism of regaining Syria’s second city, which has the strategic significance of government-controlled Damascus. With its proximity to the Turkish border, Aleppo has been a bastion for illicit flow of weapons and mercenaries that has fueled the entire Syrian conflict.
The United States and its NATO allies, Britain and France, have worked with their regional partners Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to use Aleppo as the staging post for their covert, dirty war of regime change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In many ways, Aleppo represents the last stand for the regime-change forces. When Aleppo finally falls in the coming weeks, it will spell the end of Syria’s torturous conflict which was imposed on the country by the US and its allies for the purpose of regime change under the guise of a “pro-democracy” uprising.

What an indictment that is of Washington’s criminality and that of its rogue state cronies. Some 400,000 people killedover the past five years and nearly half the population of 23 million turned into refugees. The refugee crisis and blowback terrorism that Europe is confronted with are also repercussions from this foreign criminal conspiracy to subvert Syria.


And in that victory Russia has played a formidable, heroic role. President Assad has acknowledged the vital role of Russia’s military intervention in saving his nation from the fate that other nations have succumbed to, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – all victims of US-led regime-change machinations.





It appears that there may be a reason as to why the attack on Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was allowed to take place and why there was a stand down order given. It's now coming to light that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton violated a United Nations arms embargo and sold arms to Libya and then authorized the sale of American-made weapons to Qatar. GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump brought the issue to the forefront.

"To pursue her goal of a 'democratic' government there, Clinton, along with Obama and a dozen or so members of Congress from both houses and both political parties, decided she should break the law by permitting U.S. arms dealers to violate the U.N. arms embargo and arm Libyan rebels whom she hoped would one day run the new government," Napolitano explained. "So she exercised her authority as secretary of state to authorize the shipment of American-made arms to Qatar, a country beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood and friendly to the Libyan rebels and a country the U.S. had no business arming—unless the purpose of doing so was for the arms to be transferred to the rebels."
Napolitano then went on to say that it was Clinton's policies of arming these Islamic jihadists that led to her goal of toppling Gaddafi, and she ultimately wanted to take out Assad in Syria.
Interestingly enough, the CIA was hand delivering weapons themselves to the same Islamic rebels in Syria. What does that tell you about these strange bedfellows?

Memos recovered from the incinerated compound in Benghazi give great weight to the assertion. The documents were obtained by the Washington Times and they reveal the American diplomats stationed there were keeping track of numerous potential U.S.-sanctioned weapons shipments aimed at arming our allies, "one or more of which were destined for the Transitional National Council, the Libyan movement that was seeking to oust Gadhafi and form a new government," the paper reports.




The Borei-class (NATO reporting name Dolgorukiy class) nuclear-powered submarines are capable of penetrating any missile defense system owing to its advanced weaponry, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Sunday.

"These missiles provide an adequate response to any missile defense system, wherever it is. Regardless of which ocean, [they] would try to lock us, 'Borei' will break through this defense," Rogozin told the Russian Channel One in an interview dedicated to the Russian Navy Day.

By 2020, the Russian Navy plans to operate a total of eight submarines of this type. The Borei-class nuclear-powered subs are to become the mainstay of the naval component of the country’s strategic nuclear deterrent.