On Friday, the Russian Aviation Group of Aerospace Forces of the Russian Federation continued to bomb the facilities of the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria. According to the Defense Ministry official representative, Igor Konashenkov, 14 flights of Su-34, Su-24M and Su-25 were carried out from the air base 'Hmeymim', during which six strikes against facilities of the terrorist group ISIS were inflicted. Su-25 completely destroyed a large workshop for production of land mines and improvised explosive devices, disguised as a gas cylinder factory, as well as a base of armament and military equipment of terrorists in the region of Maaret En Nuuman, in Idlib province. More than 10 units of machinery burned down as a result of the air strikes, including a BMP.
As the Syrian Ambassador, Riyad Haddad, stated yesterday, the Russian Air Force fully coordinate their actions with the command of the Syrian army: "There are the exact coordinates of the places where terrorist groups are located, so all military air strikes are made only on the positions of ISIS."
The ambassador expressed the view that terrorist, extremist groups Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have the same positions: "Al-Qaeda is, in fact, the basic core of ISIS, so attacks on these positions, of course, are logical. The Syrian army is already four years in the war in Syria, in the north, the south, the east and the west. The Russian Air Force Base, from where, in fact, the planes are making their raids, naturally has the same goal: to attack the positions of ISIS."
As for the political goals of Russia in Syria, Moscow fears the spread of extremist ideology in the Muslim regions of Russia, particularly in the North Caucasus.
The Director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights, a member of the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations, Alexander Brod, says that "the radical movements have not gone away from the North Caucasus, we know that very serious work is being done in recruiting young people, and thousands of residents of the North Caucasus are fighting on the side of ISIS, there are no exact statistics. Hundreds of people from North Caucasus republics such as Dagestan go and join the ranks of ISIS, it has become, unfortunately, a sad reality."
According to Brod, the North Caucasus provides a basis for the development of radicalism: "This is primarily due to unresolved social problems, such as unemployment, poverty, the failure in the work with youth, the weakness of civic society, the authoritarian tendencies of power that cause protest moods among the inhabitants of the region. And this is the mobility of mobilization, on which the recruiters, the radicals are playing, speculating on these challenges, on these problems of the world view, identification and so on."
Now Moscow is launching a series of round tables in the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District. "It is necessary to carry out preventive measures, warning of the risks of these threats, countering the ideology, the practices of the radicals right now, while the problem is not so actively developed, because ISIS has repeatedly said that the North Caucasus is in the field of its interest, and it is possible that those who are fighting now on the side of ISIS will return to the North Caucasus to defend their ideas with weapons in their hands, there are such risks. It is necessary to consolidate society, to seek a strategy to counter, to unite civic society and the authorities in understanding, assessing and responding to all these problems," Brod believes.
