Assad stated two things this last week and just after yesterdays announcement of CoH AND they take on an interesting perspective...when coupled with a comment from the previous week which caught everyone off guard.
1. late last week Assad made one interesting comment...he would be around for 10 years and would rebuild Syria which has the connotation of being around a long long while since the Russian AF has virtually flattened and pulverized all towns and villages held by anti Assad opposition forces.....
2. THEN two hours after the US/Russian announcement of the CoH Assad again stated he would be holding parliamentary elections on 13 April 2016.
BOTH Assad press statements were totally ignored by the US and Russia meaning no one made a single pushback/support statement either on his staying forever and rebuilding Syria to his holding elections...WHICH IMHO is totally strange.
Remember right after Munich 1938 talking about the then supposedly coming CoH Assad in an interview stated he would fight forever to restore all of Syria.....for that the Russian UNSC Ambassador Churkin supposedly "reined him in" with the comment he had to get onboard with the truce......
So Russia supposedly reins him on one comment but not on the other two???? Why is that????
In the Putin speech last night to the Russian public when he announced the CoH...he mentioned something the MSM did not pick up on the translation...he used the term...."we can hold Assad now".
Did he actually slipup and mean "hold" him for the ten years or so IMO I think so....because if you look at the Putin proposals for Syria he does not foresee Assad leaving "unless he is voted out by the Syrians themselves"...which is not about to happen anytime soon.
If you read the Assad statement on the election it was carried also by Sputnik......and a snap election would then grant him via the Russians proclaiming it was a valid democratic election since they will oversee them another 5-10 years in office.
So my core question is ...is the silence between the two... US and Russia a "tacit agreement" to allow Assad to remain in power in the hopes of then combatting IS ...there has been some chatter that one solution would be the rolling in of the FSA into the SAA in a newly reformed SAA which I am not sure how the memories of the SAA genocide of the last five years is to be washed away by a "new and improved SAA".
Assad seems to have a stronger proxy in this fight than the Russians..if one thinks about it...the Russian previous GRU Commander paid with his life for approaching Assad and asking for him to step down if the intel reporting is accurate....indications were that he had been ambushed after his meeting with Assad and then rushed to a Lebanese hospital so it would not appear as if it was a Syrian "accident" where when the news broke about his death the first response out of Moscow was he died in Moscow until social media uncovered exactly where he had died.
Besides what does one do with all of the transnational Shia jihadists still inside Syria nor does it assume the responsibility for bringing Syrian, Shia and Putin war crimes into a court of law if the rule of law is to be reestablished in Syria.
Provocative question is Russia a proxy of Iran and vice versa and who does Assad really answer to...it might be the RuAF and their new weapons, but the bulk of the fighting forces over the last four years as been Shia provided by Iran along with the funds for their pay...which for me makes Iran a stronger partner to Assad than Putin.
Remember Putin holds an unrestricted SOFA signed between Russia and Syria thus Putin plans on being in Syria for a very long time .... with or without FSA and the Sunni's.
Relying on an unreliable man, As #Putin clearly demonstrated in #Ukraine, a ceasefire is a tactic, not a goal
http://uatoday.tv/politics/nyt-relyi...in-596962.html …
