Defending 'national interests', not Assad
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev yesterday said that Russia is fighting for its national interests in Syria, not for President Bashar al-Assad.
"Of course we are not fighting for specific leaders, we are defending our national interests, on the one hand," Medvedev said in an interview to air on state television.
"And secondly, we have a request from the lawful authorities (of Syria). That is the basis we are working on," he said, quoted on the government website.
Medvedev said Russia in Syria is defending itself against the threat of Islamist extremists coming to its own country.
"The president said this: it's obvious that if we don't destroy these terrorists there, they will come to Russia."
Medvedev said that it did not matter to Russia who heads Syria in the future, as long as it is not the Islamic State jihadist group.
"Who will lead Syria should be decided by the Syrian people," Medvedev said.
On the ground, Syrian regime forces yesterday edged forward in the northern province of Aleppo with air cover from Russian warplanes, but faced fierce resistance from rebel forces in the country's centre.
Since Moscow began its air campaign in support of its Damascus ally on September 30, the army and its allies have launched four ground offensives against rebel forces in northern and central Syrian provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Latakia against al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and other rebel groups.
Troops seized at least five villages and several strategic hilltops south of the city yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. That brought them to the edges of Al-Hader, 25 kilometres from Aleppo.
A US official said as many as 2,000 fighters from Iran and its regional allies were supporting the army's offensive in coordination with Russia.
He said that over the previous 24 hours, 17 rebels and eight pro-regime fighters had been killed. Some 2,000 families fled the fighting.
In total, more than 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since it began in March 2011.
In Iraq, Iraqi forces yesterday pressed their biggest offensive in months to resume their long-stalled northward advance and disrupt jihadist lines, security officers said.
After recapturing parts of Baiji and the huge nearby refinery complex from the Islamic State group, security and allied paramilitary forces thrust further northward up the main highway leading to Mosul.
They reached the town of Zawiyah and vowed to push on to Sharqat, the northernmost town in Salaheddin province before the border with Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital.
Reclaiming control of that stretch of road and the villages along it would contribute to isolating IS strongholds east of the Tigris, such as Hawijah, from the self-proclaimed caliphate's heartland on the other side of the river.
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