U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter who has watched Russian aggression in Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, and the 2016 interference issue, states in his interview to NBC that the Russian Federation helps the civil war in Syria to continue and doesn’t make an effort to get rid of ISIS out of Syria and Iraq:
“No, they haven’t done anything against ISIL. Virtually zero. They came in, they said they were going to fight ISIL, and they said they were going to help in the civil war in Syria. They haven’t done either of those things,” said Ash Carter.
“And as a consequence, of course, we’re fighting ISIL ourselves, we have a campaign plan that you see unfolded in Mosul today and Raqqa today, encouraged, that’s going exactly according to the plan we laid out about a year ago. In fact, Iraqi security forces are approaching the Tigris River as we speak today,” added the U.S. Defense Secretary.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense, the Russian behavior in Syria doubled down on the Syrian civil war and made its ending harder:
“I think the Russians saw an opportunity there to play a role which could have been fine. Because what they said they were going to do, which they could uniquely do, is help Assad move aside gently, bring the moderate opposition into the Syrian government, and put an end to the terrible tragedy there. That’s what they said they were going to do. That would have been okay. That’s not what they’ve done. They’ve doubled down on the Syrian civil war,” stated the U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
See also: Russia establishes its S-400 and S-300 missile complexes in Syria
