[alendit]

> Right now the Kremlin is likely undergoing an intense debate on how to spin the downing of the recent Russian flight as something other than a reaction to the Russian air war in Syria.

They can always claim that ISIS hates Russia's freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKRHgmHzK0 .

[Kristine1975]

Sorry, but "they hate our freedom" has been patented by the US government for their propaganda. Also isn't Syria one of the bad guys right now, so waging war against them is a-ok? I'm getting a bit confused sometimes whether we're at war with Eurasia or Eastasia.

[exelius]

Syria (and specifically the Assad regime) is friendly with Moscow, and provides a friendly port on the Mediterranean. The US hasn't taken out Assad for human rights violations because they don't want a war with Russia. But ISIS is also clearly a threat to the US, so we can't support them either. So we basically tried to invent a third group of non-religious radicals, but without the fervor that a radical ideology provides, many of the individuals that make up this faction give up and flee to Europe after a few months of fighting.

Basically the US would like to see Assad deposed like Gadaffi or Saddam, but Russia is propping him up, and we dislike the other option more than we dislike Assad. The only other realistic option is the Kurds, but an independent Kurdistan would throw the region into chaos (and likely drive Turkey towards Russia, because the Turkish government views the Kurds as being terrorists worse than ISIS).

[unics]

I'm having trouble keeping up. I thought the current narrative was "they don't have jobs" and that's why they hate us. Silly me.

[reitanqild]

> Also isn't Syria one of the bad guys right now, so waging war against them is a-ok?

Not in Russia it seems.