By Theodore Shoebat

Syrian forces recently killed five Turkish soldiers after four Russian troops were killed in Aleppo. The official story coming out of the Russian government is that the Russian troops were killed by rebels. According to sources close to the Novaya Gazeta, the soldiers were sent to Syria because the Syrian government requested security for a meeting between top Syrian and Turkish officials right on the Turkish-Syrian border town of Kasab. The troops were ambushed when they returned from the reconnaissance of the area.

According to Novaya Gazeta, “It was alleged that the militants sent four armored vehicles with suicide bombers to the city,” and then after they exploded, one soldier, Major Bulat Akhmatyanov, was wounded. Three other soldiers, Ruslan Gimadiev, Captain Dmitry Minov and Lieutenant Vsevolod Trofimov, “evacuated the wounded comrade and returned to the position where they were caught in crossfire.” The recent report from Novaya Gazeta suggest that these men were not killed by rebels, but by their own government in order to provoke the attack on Turkish troops.

The Novaya report points to several things. Firstly, the Center for Reconciliation of the warring parties in Syria (CPVS), on February 2nd, “distributed a message in which there was not a word about any serious military clash in the vicinity of Aleppo. But detailed information was provided about the violation of the ‘cessation of hostilities by illegal armed groups’ in the Idlib de-escalation zone, listing all the settlements that were fired upon.” In addition, in this report from the CPVS there is “not a word about suicide bombers, nor about militias who attacked the positions of the Syrian government forces.” Moreover, the Novaya report states that sources have revealed to the Russian publication that the four soldiers “died not in the battle of Aleppo, but in the vicinity of Latakia, which was completely controlled by the pro-government forces.”

The report details that the soldiers “were shot at point-blank range – in the heart and in the temple.” They came to Syria with fake names and very Syrians knew that they were even on special mission in Syria. Novaya’s source told them that the troops were betrayed “with the aim of escalating the war”. As the end of the Novaya report observes:

And, judging by the latest news from Syria, the provocation was a success. On the night of February 3, the Syrian army opened artillery fire on Turkish troops in the Idlib zone. Six people were killed, seven more Turkish soldiers were injured. It is likely that the order to open fire and to eliminate the officers of the FSB FSB was issued from one center – the “party of war” surrounded by Bashar al-Assad. And today, it seems, there can be no talk of any negotiations.