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Putin Tried To Warn Us About Syria Three Years AgoPutin Tried To Warn Us About Syria Three Years Ago, But Nobody ListenedSubmitted by Darius Sahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org, As Russia and the United States approach arguably the most dangerous crossroads in history — and as Western media continues to crucify Russia for its actions within Syria — a closer look at the rationale Putin used for intervening in the Syrian war paints a sane explanation of how we ended up at this juncture of a global conflict. Unsurprisingly, the explanation comes from the Russian president himself and was actually offered over 3 years ago. As expected, the Western corporate media and the Obama administration chose to ignore Vladimir Putin’s explanation for Russia’s stance on Syria and continued a number of policies that have completely exacerbated the conflict. In a live interview with RT in June 2013, Putin was asked for an explanation regarding Russia’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, even though this support has made some people very angry at Russia. Putin’s response was that Russia does not support the Assad government or Assad himself, but before defining Russia’s official position, he explained what Russia does not want to do within Syria or across the Middle East:
However, according to Putin, what worries Russia can be identified by having a look “at what is going on in the Middle East in general.”
In Putin’s eyes, these events are no accident. As he puts it, these events happened for a reason:
Russia found this out the hard way when its military intervened in Afghanistan in the 1980s, a war many historians believe to be one of the main reasons for the fall of the Soviet empire. According to Robert Gates, director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and Secretary of Defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. began arming and funding jihadists in Pakistan and Afghanistan six months prior to the Soviet invasion with the express goal of luring the Soviets into a quagmire. Similarly, and not by accident, the tactic used to draw Russia into Afghanistan is the same tactic being used today in Syria. In fact, Obama warned Putin that Russia’s adventures into Syria would result in the same quagmire the Soviets met in Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, supporting radical militant groups to overthrow regimes in the Middle East has been a key hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy. As Putin notes:
What happened to Libya resonated strongly with Russia due to the fact that in that situation, the West convinced Russia and China not to use their veto power at the U.N. Security Council level — they were told regime change was not part of NATO’s agenda in Libya. As it turned out, however, this was one of the first things that happened as soon as authorization was granted for NATO to bomb Libyan territory. Putin immediatelyquestioned why NATO was attacking Muammar Gaddafi directly despite their promises they would not do so. Putin has therefore drawn the following conclusion:
The role of al-Nusra in the Syrian conflict continues to be the main issue today, as Russia has repeatedly asked for the United States to differentiate between terrorist groups and moderate groups on the ground in Syria.[They cannot be differentiated] As Putin said:
Putin’s reference to fighters in Mali is a direct attack on France’s role in the war on terror. France has been actively bombing Mali since 2013, though this is rarely covered by the mainstream media. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has noted, the fighters France supported in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi were the same fighters they have supposedly been fighting in Mali.
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