Russia claims if fights ISIS in Syria. Western and Syrian sources claim it’s the opposition forces that are under attack. But is it that simple?
Let’s watch a short video from Russia’s Ministry of Defense official Youtube channel:
The title says “The strike on ISIS ammunition depot in province Homs (of Syria – RRT)”.
Let’s take a close look on the first few seconds of the video. Here is how the area looks like:
Now if you go to Google Maps and search for a landmark with coordinates 35.829644,36.073909you’ll see the following picture:
The area looks identical to the one filmed during Russian air force air strike shown on the video above, so that is the exact landmark where the bombs “fell on ISIS ammunition depot”. The problem is: this landmark is located far from ISIS-controlled territories. Moreover, it is far from province Homs itself:
As you can see, the province Homs is nowhere close to that point:
Now remember that at October 5 Turkey claimed Russian military aircrafts violated Turkish airspace:
Russia says Turkish airspace violation ‘a mistake,’ Turkish media report
Check out the video’s publication date: it was published at October 5. Now all pieces of the puzzle come together: Russia was filming its air strike of some land mark located only 5 kilometres away from Turkish border, and as a result of its proximity to the border an aircraft “by mistake” entered Turkish airspace, which makes perfect sense now if you put together the aircraft heading (seen on the video) and the geographic location of the strike.
The only question that still has no answer: why on Earth did Russia drop bombs near Turkish border pretending it was taking place in province Homs?