‘Syrian’ Footage of Deadly Airstrikes on Turkish Military Shows They Were Actually Russian Strikes

Syrian state TV broadcast airstrike footage from the battle of Nairab this Thursday where Turks and rebel combined for a joint offensive against the Russian-backed Syrian army:

The Syrian TV billed the footage which includes bombs falling on Turkish M60 tanks as showing Syrian airstrikes. And indeed, so far footage captured in Russian strikes has only ever been released through the Russian ministry of defense. Yet here there was Syrian TV in possession of it just hours after the battle, so it must have been indeed Syrians jets which bloodied Turkish armor at Nairab? 

Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s say you were the Russians. Quite likely you would want to make the airstrikes footage public to help deter the Turks from further ill-conceived offensives. Indeed the videos show just what a turkey shoot [sorry] it was. But at the same time, you wouldn’t necessarily want to rub the Turks’ face in the fact you had caused them 2 KIA and 5 WIA. So what would you do?

You would give it to Syrians to release and bill as their own. 

That’s a nice conjecture and all but is there any indication that is indeed what happened? I’m glad you asked, actually, there is.

You know how the internet figured out the warplane a group of Turkish commandos was firing a MANPAD at during the battle must have been Russian? Well, it turns out the Turkish tanks that were hit (for the loss of 2 crew) were just 100 meters away from these commandos:

Russian airforce conducted airstrikes 100 meters from the building occupied by Turkish soldiers who launched MANPADS on, presumably, Russian warplane earlier. pic.twitter.com/Yvh3pVKPMO

— monitoring (@warsmonitoring) February 22, 2020

So yeah, either all that is one big coincidence or it wasn’t only the Turks firing at the Russians, but also the other way around.

And remember the Russian military did state it joined the battle at the Syrians’ request and destroyed 5 technicals, 6 APCs and 1 tank. Rebels have a few (Russian-made T-55, T-72, T-90) tanks in Idlib as a whole, but not necessarily in Nairab, and none can be seen in the airstrikes footage (only US-made M60s).

Turkey and Russia both have reasons to pretend the Turkish armor was not taken out by Russia when that’s where all the video material points to. (Meanwhile, we don’t even have a good video confirmation the Syrians were even flying that day.)

This is similar to 2016 when Moscow pretended it was satisfied with Erdogan’s fairy-tale that he had nothing to do with the 2015 shoot-down of the Russian Su-24 by a Turkish F-16 in which one of the Russian pilots was killed.

Two Turkish Land Forces M60 Sabre MBT were destroyed by Russian airstrikes. https://t.co/qwjku3wJxm pic.twitter.com/R09V69FKFB

— Aldin 🇧🇦 (@aldin_ww) February 21, 2020

Correction, it was 3.. pic.twitter.com/o0Bgqdqo71

— Aldin 🇧🇦 (@aldin_ww) February 21, 2020

Seems now like 4, on this position both of TAF M60 Sabres were knocked out pic.twitter.com/5okJNh8mfo

— Aldin 🇧🇦 (@aldin_ww) February 21, 2020