Putin Accuses World Of “Using Terrorist Groups” To Destabilize Governments, by Tyler Durden

Untangling the tangled web in Syria. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

If you’ve followed the incessant back-and-forth between Washington and Moscow over the course of the proxy wars raging in Ukraine and Syria, you know that the Kremlin is without equal when it comes to describing US foreign policy in a way that is both succinct and accurate.

This was on full display earlier this year when Vladimir Putin’s Security Council released a document that carried the subtle title “About The US National Security Strategy.” We’ve also seen it on a number of occasions over the past several weeks in the wake of Russia’s stepped up military role in support of the Assad regime at Latakia. For instance, last week, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova delivered the following hilariously veracious assessment of how Washington has sought to characterize Moscow’s relationship with Damascus:

“First we were accused of providing arms to the so-called ‘bloody regime that was persecuting democratic activists, now it’s a new edition – we are supposedly harming the fight against terrorism. That is complete rubbish.”

Yes, it probably is, but let’s not forget that Russia hasn’t exactly been forthcoming when it comes to acknowledging that, like Washington, Moscow’s interest in Syria is only related to terrorism to the extent that terrorism serves as a Western tool to destabilize the Assad regime which, you’re reminded, must remain in place if Putin intends to protect Gazprom’s iron grip over Europe’s supply of natural gas.

Of course what that suggests is that even as Russia uses ISIS as a smokescreen to justify sending troops to Syria, the Kremlin is by definition being more honest about its motives than The White House. That is, ISIS has destabilized Assad and because Russia has an interest in keeping the regime in power, Moscow actually does have a reason to eradicate Islamic State. The US, on the other hand, facilitated the destabilization of the country in the first place by playing a role in training and arming all manner of Syrian rebels, and to say that some of them might well have gone on to fight for ISIS would be a very generous assessment when it comes to describing the CIA’s involvement (a less generous assessment would be to call ISIS a “strategic CIA asset”). That means that the US will only really care about wiping out ISIS once Assad is gone and it’s time to install a puppet government that’s friendly to both Washington and Riyadh and at that point – assuming there are no other regimes in the area that the Pentagon feels like might need destabilizing – the US military will swiftly “liberate” Syria from the ISIS “scourge.”

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