More interesting are reports of on-site cremations of Russian mercenaries to hide casualty numbers.
The jihadists of Islamic State have lost nearly all the terrain they once controlled, pushed to an ever-smaller area along the Iraq-Syria border by U.S.-assisted Kurdish forces and Russia-backed Syrian forces. (The Kurds, the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own, have long aspired to establish a sovereign Kurdistan in the area.) Since negotiations aren’t an option for Islamic State’s fighters, the battle will likely continue until they’ve lost all their territory.
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Over the course of the war, the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, has established control over several majority-Kurdish areas in northern Syria and has pushed to connect them in one contiguous zone of “self-administration.” That alarms Turkey, which has battled autonomy-seeking Kurds for decades.
www.bloomberg.com/...
More details have emerged from a massive battle in Syria that is said to have pitted hundreds of Russian military contractors and Syrian and Iranian pro-government fighters against the U.S. service members and their Syrian rebel allies — and it looks as if it was a mission to test the United States’ resolve.
Bloomberg first reported this week that Russian military contractors took part in what the United States called an “unprovoked attack” on a well-known headquarters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a rebel cohort the U.S. has trained, equipped, and fought alongside for years.
Reuters cited several other sources on Friday as confirming that Russian contractors were among the attackers and that they took heavy losses. The purpose of the attack, which saw 500 or so pro-government fighters get close to the U.S.-backed position, was to test the United States’ response, Reuters’ sources said.
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A source close to the Russian military contracting firm, Wagner, told Reuters that the majority of the 500 were Russians, and they advanced into a zone designated as neutral under a deal between the Russian military and the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.
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An anonymous source told Reuters that Bloomberg’s report that 300 Russians died was “broadly correct.” The U.S. reported more than 100 dead.
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Reports increasingly indicate that Russia has taken to using military contractors as a means of concealing their combat losses as they look to bolster Syrian President Bashar Assad’s flagging forces.
taskandpurpose.com/...