Hi Lee,

in essence such announcements like that by Wael are just a repeat of all the same stories from Aleppo, from Darayya, from Madayya and so…

Hi Lee,

in essence such announcements like that by Wael are just a repeat of all the same stories from Aleppo, from Darayya, from Madayya and so many other places: ‘leave or die’.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find out what’s really going on in Eastern Ghouta: a minimal dose of investigative journalism is going to deliver full explanations.

Consider the article ‘Into the Tunnels’ I’ve linked a few days ago as a sort of ‘starting point’.

The next thing one must accept and understand in this regards is that Putin lied when ‘ordering withdrawal’ in November 2017: there was none of that. This is what a mass of people refuses to ‘believe’.

Cold fact is that — and as can be seen from the sat sat photo here, taken on 21 December 2017 — three weeks after Putin’s lie about ‘withdrawal’, the number of operational aircraft at Hmemmem AB (the photo is not showing the maintenance area, where there are always 3–5 Su-24s alone), was still at 30+. I.e. exactly at the same level like all the year 2017. 
 
(Mind: included in that figure were 10 Su-24s, 6 Su-25s, 4 Su-30s, 6 Su-34s, and 4 Su-35s photographed in that very moment at Hmemmem AB. This number is not including 4–6 Su-25s deployed at Dayr az-Zawr since September 2017, nor any of helicopters deployed at various other places. Since I’m too lazy now to search for videos showing these too, we can even keep them out of the total.)
 
Ten days later, on 31 December 2017, Hmemmem AB was still packed full with VKS’ aircraft. On the contrary, the VKS constructed another - third in total — maintenance hangar. With other words: there was not only no withdrawal, but the Russians actually continued expanding their facilities in Syria. 
 
Thus, the ‘withdrawal’ means the same like it meant in February 2016, and ever after: the Russians are merely replacing aircraft and crews, but their bombing campaign goes on at the same pace like since October 2015. It is just not reported, and there is no way to capture every single sortie (and/or its results) on a video. I’m currently lacking the time to run similar daily reviews like the last year, but here some details about yesterday: 
 
 — Between 00.00 and 01.30, the VKS launched 10 sorties from Hmemmem AB. Seems most of these ended with bombing the Lataminah area, in northern Hama. 
 
 — Between 05.00 and 06.00 in the morning, the VKS launched no less than 17 combat sorties from Hmemmem AB. While most of these ended over the area between Ma’arat an-Nauman and Lataminah (i.e. southern Idlib and northern Hama again), several went all the way down to Eastern Ghouta. 
 
 Mind: that wasn’t even ‘the most intensive’ period of yesterday: most of flying was recorded between 11.00 and 13.00, when — just by a casual look at all that came in here — some 40 combat sorties were flown. Still, that’s 27 combat sorties within the first 6 hours in the morning — and that despite the supposed ‘cease-fire agreement’ with Turkey, which at least resulted in most of Idlib not being bombed any more.

More importantly, about 70 combat sorties were flown in just half of the day yesterday, indicating that the actual total is likely to be close to what it was back in late April last year in just half the day. Sure: these sorties were ‘not only’ flown by the Russians, but nearly 90% were.
 
 …and this is no ‘unsupported guessing’, nor am I alone with my data and conclusions: others have tracked 76 air strikes on Eastern Ghouta alone — on 20 and 21 February. 
 
That’s exactly the same tempo of operations like, for example last year in May, when the Russians were involved in stopping and then counter-attacking the insurgent offensive into northern Hama. 
 
(Indeed, Lataminah is under constant bombardment - without a single day of interruption, at least since 15 March 2017. So much so, I’ve got no trace of an idea what do they expect to destroy there any more…?)
 
Now, and for obvious reasons, average people have no trace of clue about this. The mainstream media even less so. But, that’s the reality of this war in Syria: since 30 September 2015, these didn’t stop for a single day.

And that’s what actually matters.

So, one can babble about ‘nobody is good there’ and whatever else. But, that’s all entirely pointless: useless academic exercises in semantics.

Matter of fact is that nearly everything provided to the public about the war in Syria, no matter by whom, is IGNORING — if not INTENTIONALLY LYING about — what’s actually going on there. Become aware of that, collect details, analyse, and you’re going to come to crystal-clear conclusions in a matter of few hours.

Statistics is speaking a perfectly clear language: there is a campaign of intentional, barbaric bombardment of Eastern Ghouta going on. It’s aim to ‘punish’, ‘kill’ and eventually displace locals that turned against Assad and refuse to give up. Ditto in regards of northern Hama. It’s the same style of a barbaric campaign of bombardments we could’ve seen during the final weeks of the siege of Aleppo, durign the sieges of Darayya and Madayya, and so many other places. Everything else are mere ‘ambient sounds’.