Reports of the alleged troop buildup in Syria of a “Russian expeditionary force” to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, first appeared last month (August) in Israeli and Ukrainian online publications. The Kremlin denied these accounts, but seemingly halfheartedly (Kommersant, September 8). On September 4, speaking to journalists in Vladivostok after returning from a visit to Beijing, President Vladimir Putin announced he was working to form “an international coalition to fight ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—more recently renamed the Islamic State, IS]” and has been discussing this over the phone with US President Barack Obama and Middle Eastern …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation