PHOTO: A woman moves through the smoke from a Russian airstrike on Aleppo city on Thursday
I spoke at length with Monocle 24’s The Globalist on Friday morning, assessing both the regime-Russian-Hezbollah-Iranian offensive north of Aleppo city and — far from coincidentally — the failure of the short-lived “peace talks” in Geneva.
The discussion started with the false reports in mainstream media that the offensive is on the verge of defeating rebels in Aleppo city. Clearing away the exaggeration, we talked about the seriousness of the attacks, including Russia’s mass bombing, the flight of up to 70,000 people, and the threat to rebel supply lines between the Turkish border and Aleppo.
That in turn led to discussion of how Russia and the Assad regime used the Geneva talks as a charade for their real priority: the continued military campaign to push back rebels in both northwest and southern Syria, meanwhile maintaining the sieges and bombardment killing thousands of civilians since Russia’s intervention last autumn.
Listen from 4:51:
