MESOP “RUSSIAN TACTICS”: Putin Changes Course, Says Aleppo Bombing Pause to Continue

26 Oct 2016 – Russian Defense Ministry’s Igor Konashenkov — Warplanes have not flown over Aleppo since October 18 – Shifting its approach again, Russia has said that its bombing “pause” of Syria’s largest city Aleppo will continue. After a suspension declared on October 18, Russian-regime attacks on opposition areas resumed on Sunday. However, yesterday the Defense Ministry said the pause would continue, with aircraft staying out of a 10-km (six-mile) zone.

Ministry official Sergei Rudskoi did not give a reason for the changing course of action. Instead, spokesman Igor Konashenkov maintained that Moscow had never restarted attacking, insisting that Russian and Syrian warplanes had not even approached Aleppo for eight days.

The Defense Ministry’s position also contradicted that taken by the Foreign Ministry. Sergei Ryabkov, the Deputy Foreign Minister, told reporters, “Nothing of what has been required in the past three days took place, so now the issue of renewing the humanitarian pause is irrelevant.”

The Local Coordination Committees indicated that the airstrikes had stopped on Tuesday. It documented only 12 deaths in #Aleppo Province, most of them from rebel clashes with the Islamic State.

Soon after Russian-regime airstrikes were renewed on September 19, killing hundreds of civilians, US Secretary of State John Kerry called for a suspension of military overflights of Aleppo. Damascus and Moscow immediately rejected the measure as an infringement of Syrian sovereignty.

Kerry called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to express concern over the bombing, but there was no indication whether the conversation had led to Tuesday’s shift from Moscow. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman John Kirby said, “We obviously welcome any reduction in the violence, but it has to be met with a commitment and an actual delivery of humanitarian assistance, which was the purpose in the first place.”He said Washington would prefer putting a longer-term cease-fire to ensure delivery of aid, rather than sporadic pauses: “I don’t want to couch this as nothing but failure. There has been some progress made, but there’s obviously still more work to be done.”

Russia and the regime are maintaining a siege imposed in late August. Residents in east Aleppo report shortages of food and basic supplies with spiraling prices, and there have been claims of two deaths of infants from starvation in recent days. www.mesop.de