‘Not One American Flag is Waved in Syria’: Syrians Seem to Think Russia Liberated Their Country!

- It's remarkable in this sense, we have a special guest today. He came in directly after arriving from the Khmeimim airbase. After a ten-month-long Syrian deployment, our military correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny came back.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky: Those are faces of people who want war. Put the picture back! Here are our men, they are quiet, and these ones are shooting. Who are they? Americans.

- Poddubny knows who they are.

 

- Hero, well done!

- We know that Vladimir Putin and the General Staff announced yesterday and the day before yesterday that Syria was freed from ISIS terrorists.

We thought we were related to it. By we, I mean our country. But it turned out different. It turned out that we had nothing to do with it and what you, Yevgeny, saw there was nonsense. Let's listen to one American General. And he'll finally explain what you were doing there for 10 months.

Eric Pahon, Pentagon spokesman. "The Syrian regime and Russia didn't show a serious attitude or obligations in destroying ISIS. They carried out only a small part of the operations against ISIS, and most of the territory freed in Iraq and Syria was freed due to the efforts of the global coalitions and its partners.

The global coalition will continue the Syrian operation to support local forces on the site to finish the defeat of ISIS and stabilize the liberated territory, and this will help Syrian refugees and the displaced to come back to their homes."

- Yevgeny?

Vladimir Zhirinovsky: It's a lie!

Yevgeny Poddubny: It's impossible to take this statement seriously.

- Zhenya, it's an official Pentagon representative.

- This is one of the stories in which the lie completely replaces the truth. Moreover, Washington has no means to prove this. This statement is for the Western mainstream media's audience.

They could talk about the situation in Aleppo, without being in Aleppo. How could they talk about Raqqa without even visiting it?

- But they say they freed Raqqa!

- They destroyed it. Our holding's correspondent Anton Stepanenko was in Raqqa. He showed us that there wasn't a single whole building in the city after the liberation.

I was in Aleppo, Palmyra, Abu Kamal, Deir ez-Zor. In fact, they're less destroyed. It means that the Russian military that supported the Syrian operations understood that a destroyed liberated city isn't that valuable.

Americans lost the initiative in Syria when our group arrived there in 2015. In fact, they supported not only the moderate opposition and the Kurds, we all remember that in Aleppo they supported radicals, Islamists, people that are, in fact, terrorists and killers. But it was easily forgotten, and now, people are discussing Raqqa, the liberation of Mosul.

So, it's a story about when the tail wags the dog, both metaphorically and literally. Americans did support the Kurds. At Tanf, they supported radical Islamists who were called moderate opposition, as always. On the map, you can see the At Tanf area.

- Can you show it?

- Yes. At Tanf is here, on the border between Iraq and Jordan. Such an intersection. There's an American military base there. It's illegal. It's a small operational forward base. A refugee camp is also there. It's near here.

In fact, the units under command of the American specialists are formed here. I just can't call them moderate.

- Those same bogeymen.

- They are radical Islamists, and everything that goes under this term, which were brought there under the pretext of the fight against ISIS. But in fact, they participated in the operations exclusively against the Syrian government.

And I talked to former fighters, who at some point decided to switch to the official Damascus' side, we talked and they said that they were trained to oppose Assad.

I remind you that no one invited the Americans. Neither the UN, neither Mr. Assad, who is the president.

In the end, it turns out that no one even talks about the total breach of international law. As for me, and I spent a long time in Syria and remember how the war started, how it continued and how it changed when the Russian military began fulfilling their task in Syria. The American role in the defeat of the Islamic State is not minimal, because the US used ISIS for their purposes. When they needed to strike ISIS to protect their allies, they struck ISIS. When it was needed that ISIS terrorists fight the Syrian army, ISIS terrorists were let through the Kurdish military posts, ISIS terrorists were indirectly supported, ISIS terrorists received American ammunition that unexpectedly fell from the sky.

- And it fell slowly and carefully not to explode.

- Yes. And in fact, Americans continue using radical Islamists from different groups and dispersed ISIS formations that still exist. It's more about local counterterrorist operations.

But the Americans used ISIS to influence the military situation in Syria acting against Damascus and us, consequently. Against Russia. Now, they're doing the same with different groups.

- We paid attention to the fact that in your report, thankful Syrians were holding Russian flags and President Putin's portraits. Against the background of the huge role of the US and the US-led coalition, are there Trump's portraits and American flags? Maybe you saw them somewhere in Syria?

- If they call themselves liberators, there must be. Did you see them?

- Even small ones?

- After the American liberation, there're no buildings to put such portraits on.

- They'd have done it but there are no buildings, got it.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky: The whole Middle East is against the US. There'll be no flag. There'll be no civilians. For Iraq, for Libya, for Syria. People hate Americans there. They're at the bases, and the bases are small. They lied to the Kurds, the Syrian opposition can't do anything. And they proclaim to the whole world that they did something there, that they won.

Since World War II, for 70 years, they've been saying in the history books that the US and Britain won over fascist Germany and Russians just started the offensive somewhere on the Eastern front. A small Russian unit. They lied about everything and continue doing it here. And it'll go on until we take a tough stance and respond in kind.

One must howl with the wolves. We won't succeed if we behave like poodles. Like a bear, we must smash them, suffocate them, break them. Softly, right.

- Zhenya, a small comment.

- Now we see the video of the Syrian flag being raised in Abu Kamal. We prepared a big material there. You can see that the buildings aren't destroyed. It's a liberated city. That's what a liberated city looks like. And not a destroyed one

- It’s clear now.