Russia Targeting List of Terrorist Groups in Syria: Kremlin
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Kremlin said on Thursday that Russian air strikes in Syria were targeting a list of terrorist organizations and that it was too early to say whether President Vladimir Putin was satisfied with the campaign so far.
Speaking a day after Moscow launched a series of strikes against what it said were extremist targets inside Syria, Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said, "These organizations (on the target list) are well-known and the targets are chosen in coordination with the armed forces of Syria."
According to a Reuters report, when asked whether Putin was satisfied with the way the Russian air campaign was shaping up, Peskov said, "It is too early to talk about that."
Russia's strikes on Wednesday represented its biggest Middle East intervention in decades and plunged the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase.
Moscow launched its first air strikes against terrorist targets in Syria hours after Russian parliament gave a formal consent to President Putin to use the country’s military in Syria to fight terrorism at a request from the Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"In accordance with the decision by Supreme Commander of Russian Armed Forces Vladimir Putin, aircraft from the Russian Aerospace Force began today (Wednesday) an operation which involves precision airstrikes on ISIL land-based targets in Syria," spokesman for Russian Defense Ministry Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
Meanwhile, the office of Assad welcomed Russia's decision to carry out air strikes in Syria, saying the military support came at the request of Damascus.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011. In the past four years, more than 240,000 people have died in Syria -overwhelmingly civilians– and around 4 million Syrian people are now refugees in other countries. Another 7.6 million are displaced inside Syria.
