... collapsed as a house of cards.
Still, though the strategic partnership had been mostly imaginary, the losses appeared to be more than real. Today Turkey arguably feels more pain than Russia does. Grounding the Russian aircraft has not helped to protect the Syrian Turkmen population close to the Turkish border; on the contrary, Turkmen opposition groups are more vulnerable now than they were ever before. If the idea was to enforce a no-fly zone over a part of the Syrian territory, it worked the other way ...
... officers on the spot, but the Turkish government has stood by its military's actions. Turkey has so far been inflexible and intransigent.
Russia by contrast has acted in a mature and responsible manner. It has reaffirmed
its commitment
to the war in Syria and announced that it will deploy additional
anti-aircraft missiles
to the country but has refrained from taking any lethal action. In a region awash in air strikes, arms shipments, and mass terrorism, any forbearance is welcome.
It should be a ...
The incident that occurred in the skies over Syria when a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24 got the whole world talking about how close we came to an all-out conflict in the Middle East. Some commentators have suggested that today we are closer to an open conflict between Russia and NATO than ...