State Department spokesman John Kirby warned Russia on Wednesday its radical Salafist terrorists in Syria may soon attack Russian cities.
“Extremist groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which could include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities. Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags, and will continue to lose resources, perhaps even aircraft,” Kirby said.
Because the “extremist groups” in Syria are supported by the United States and its Gulf Emirate partners, this remark can only be interpreted as a threat against Russia by the State Department.
Russia said as much.
“We can’t assess those statements as anything else but a call, a directive for action,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov added the statement by Kirby amounted to “the most frank confession by the U.S. side so far that the whole ‘opposition’ ostensibly fighting a ‘civil war’ in Syria is a U.S.-controlled international terrorist alliance.”
“What makes Kirby’s statement particularly shocking is that the scale of direct U.S. influence on terrorists’ activity is global and reaches as far as Russia,” he said.
CBS News tried to downplay the comments by Zakharova and Konashenkov:
The remarks by Russian officials have shown a degree of mistrust and strain between Moscow and Washington after the collapse of the U.S.-Russia-brokered truce and the Syrian army onslaught on Aleppo backed by Russian warplanes. The growing friction makes it increasingly unlikely that the cease-fire could be revived.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Washington is “on the verge” of ending Syria talks with Moscow because of days of deadly bombings of Aleppo by Russian and Syrian planes.
In other words, Kerry is threatening to shut down the truce in response to Syria’s effort to fight against US and Saudi-backed terrorists destroying its country.
Konashenkov’s remarks are prescient. The Russians are well aware this “international terrorist alliance” (created by the CIA, Pakistani intelligence, and the Saudis) was imported into the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union following the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan. “Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic fundamentalism was largely serving Washington’s strategic interests in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and the Middle East,” writes Michel Chossudovsky.
Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab, rebel leaders fighting in the renegade Chechen autonomous region of the Russian Federation, were trained and indoctrinated in CIA-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The CIA has exploited Islam to destroy secular institutions in the Russian Federation. “The enforcement of Islamic law in the largely secular Muslim societies of the former Soviet Union has served America’s strategic interests in the region. Previously, a strong secular tradition based on a rejection of Islamic law prevailed throughout the Central Asian republics and the Caucasus, including Chechnya and Dagestan (which are part of the Russian Federation),” Chossudovsky adds.
The Saudis imported their radical Wahhabist creed into Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tajikistan in the late 1980s following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Islamic Djamaat of Dagestan and Chechen separatists established an independent Islamist state in the Caucasus. The CIA asset Ibn Al-Khattab organized raids against the Russian army.
The establishment media portrays the Russian response to Kirby’s statement as intransigence and unwillingness to participate in a proposed truce calling for an end to attacks on jihadists attempting to overthrow al-Assad and establish a Wahhabist principality in Syria.
The Russians have a direct interest in stopping terrorism in Syria and Kirby provided an additional rationale with his remark.
