Konflikten i Syrien

Putin: No need to distinguish between ‘moderate’ & other terrorists
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There can be no "moderate" terrorists, President Putin said, speaking about the situation in the Middle East at the Valdai discussion forum.

"Why play with words dividing terrorists into moderate and not moderate. What's the difference?" Putin told the forum.

A whole "snarl" of terrorist groups act in the region, who fight also against each other for "sources of income" and not for ideology, Putin said, adding that the weapons provided to "moderate" opposition in the region had ended up in the hands of terrorists.
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Some countries are playing a double game, the Russian president said, adding that while they fight against terrorism they also "place figures on the board" in their own interests.

“Success in fighting terrorists cannot be reached if using some of them as a battering ram to overthrow disliked regimes," Putin told the forum, saying that this way the terrorists would not go anywhere. "It's just an illusion that they can be dealt with [later], removed from power and somehow negotiated with," he added.

Warplanes bombed the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, stronghold of Islamic State insurgents, on Thursday, hitting some of the group's offices and killing at least four civilians in the vicinity, residents and a monitor group said.

A resident in the city said there were at least 17 air strikes on the heart of Raqqa, and electricity had gone off in the city.
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It was not immediately clear who bombed Raqqa, which in the past few months has been targeted by a U.S.-led air strike coalition and by Russians and Syrian government warplanes.

ISIS is a reality and we have to accept that we cannot eradicate a well-organized and popular establishment such as the Islamic State; therefore I urge my western colleagues to revise their mindset about Islamic political currents, put aside their cynical mentalité and thwart Vladimir Putin’s plans to crush Syrian Islamist revolutionaries,? Anadolu News Agency quoted Hakan Fidan as saying on Sunday.

http://www.syrianews.cc/turkish-mit-chief-crosses-all-lines-and-defends-isis/