Pentagon Has Opened Propaganda Front Against Russia

Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin was forced to respond to Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who claimed in Senate hearings that Russia is employing non-precision weapons in Syria, which is leading to a “massive flow of refugees.” And in the general’s opinion, Russia is doing so deliberately, using the flow of migrants “to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

“It’s not up to an expert on bombing Afghan weddings to accuse us of ‘non-precision bombing,’” Rogozin wrote on his Twitter page. Here it’s necessary to point out that what’s being referred to is an incident in Urozgan province in which American pilots sent nearly 100 civilian farmers gathered at a family celebration to kingdom come. An episode in which U.S. aircraft bombed an Afghan “Doctors Without Borders” hospital in Kunduz is well-documented. And this sad list goes on — more than enough facts have accumulated.

Yet so far none of the accusations of “non-precision bombings” being attributed to Russia’s Air Force has been substantiated in any way. No matter how many times Moscow asked that objective control data be made available in order to get to the bottom of the matter, a response never came. Even the Turkish news agency Anadolu Agency — which, citing some Syrian Institute for Justice (an organization under Islamic State control), reported that supposedly in the month of February alone, nearly 400 civilians, including women and children, were killed by Russian Air Force bombs — didn’t happen to have any evidence other than words.

Instead of facts, our Western partners prefer to operate with technical military reasoning, and in a very peculiar form at that. When the Russian Navy and Air Force carpet bombed the Islamic State group’s positions, fortifications, and columns of oil tankers with Kalibr and X-101 strategic cruise missiles, which are truly capable of flying into a fortochka,* our Western partners kept talking about excessive use of force. When ordinary high-explosive bombs were utilized, the very same four-star Gen. Breedlove, his brain on autopilot, stated that the Russians by definition can’t bomb with precision because they don’t have, so he said, high-precision weapons.

You can’t please him no matter what. And it seems to be a clinical case. No matter how many times officials from the Russian Ministry of Defense have trumpeted their guided bombs (and showed them in action), no matter how many times they’ve harped on the unique aiming complex that allows even ordinary high-explosive bombs to hit the bulls-eye with precision, no matter how many times they’ve played video clips at the Russian National Defense Management Center that show 100 percent hits, no matter how many times they’ve demonstrated that the day before a bombing, intelligence on the targets is gathered repeatedly and thoroughly from various sources — it’s to no effect. Yet at the same time, no one in the West even batted an eye when France 2, following an American TV channel, pirated a Russian Ministry of Defense video, using it to talk about the successes of its air force. Moreover, they said to the whole world: We (saying, "See for yourself!") are carrying out meticulous strikes with high-precision weapons, whereas the Russians are bombing with whatever they can get their hands on. And for greater authenticity, they blurred out the Russian letters in the video…

It’s clear that it’s extremely inconvenient to get involved with such brothers-in-arms in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Especially since unity of opinion somehow never occurs among militaries, diplomats, and government officials in Western organizations.

Last Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke yet again by phone and reaffirmed the critical importance of coordination between our countries for strengthening the truce in Syria, first and foremost along military lines. And on the very same day, Pentagon representative Michelle Baldanza unexpectedly announced that the U.S. Department of Defense isn’t cooperating with Russia and isn’t coordinating anything. “We are only participating in limited discussions in order to ensure the safety of our pilots and that of coalition pilots as well.” There are three possibilities here: Either Baldanza isn’t up to speed at all, or we can congratulate our American partners on the reincarnation of yet another Jen Psaki on the political scene, or there really is no coordination between Russia and the U.S. in the fight against the banned-in-Russia Islamic State group.

At the very least, such speculation is suggested by United Nations Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq, who came forward with a tearful appeal to Russia and the U.S. to finally “coordinate their efforts and draw up a joint map on the military situation in Syria.”** At present, the U.N. has to use maps from the Internet, from which it’s practically impossible to determine which area falls under the ceasefire and whom to bomb and to whom to drop humanitarian aid.

You have to agree that it’s a very strange situation if, according to a statement by Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, professional contact has been established and an information exchange supposedly takes place every two hours between officers at the U.S. Cooperative Monitoring Center in Amman and our soldiers from the Coordination Center for Reconciliation Between the Conflicting Parties at the Hmeymim Airbase.

Somehow I don’t want to believe that our American partners throw all of the Russian correspondence on the operational situation in Syria into the garbage without reading it. Chances are not all members of the U.S. military establishment find it interesting. And that includes Philip Breedlove, who doesn’t even hide the fact that he’s not as worried about the Islamic State group or the no less odious Jabhat al-Nusra as he is about Russia’s military presence in the Middle East. According to him, “Russia’s entry into the war in Syria has changed the dynamic in the air and on the ground.” And the American general is also very concerned about the fact that Russia has deployed its forces in the eastern Mediterranean and western Syria, “sharply limiting NATO access to these areas.”

It should be noted that the U.S. and its allies had two years to deal with the Islamists. And even now they’re not really trying: All their best forces have left, together with Breedlove, for the propaganda front against Russia.

*Editor’s note: A “fortochka” is a Russian term for a small ventilation window.

**Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, this precise quote could not be independently verified.