There’s been some debate over the last two months about whether the concerted effort on Moscow’s part to release hundreds upon hundreds of MoD clips depicting airstrikes in Syria on the way to embarrassing Washington paints an accurate picture of what’s really going on.
That is, if one simply compares the Russian footage to what we know or have seen with regard to America’s 15-month air campaign against Islamic State, it would be easy to conclude that the US simply hasn’t been trying very hard - or at least not compared to The Kremlin.
While that’s probably an accurate assessment, it’s not always easy to tell what exactly the Russians are hitting when it comes to the targets being vaporized in the videos (although it’s pretty clear in the clips depicting strikes on oil tankers) and the US contends that one reason The Pentagon has been cautious is that Washington is concerned with civilian casualties, especially as it relates to the drivers in the crude truck convoys. For those who follow the US’s exploits in the Mid-East that’s a hard pill to swallow given what we know about collateral damage in drone strikes [4] and given what happened in October in Kunduz [5], but the point is, taking Moscow at its word when Russia’s intent is quite clearly to make a mockery of the West’s efforts is just as dangerous as taking Washington at its word when The White House swears the US is doing everything in its power to fight terror.
All of that said, there’s also been what certainly feels like a marked increase in the number of independently released videos since Russia began bombing rebel and extremist targets. That is, in addition to what Moscow has released on social media, there have been dozens upon dozens of videos shot from the ground which depict either Russian airstrikes themselves or the aftermath. Although it’s not always easy to discern what precisely is going on in the amateur footage, there almost unquestionably seem to be more videos from on the ground cameramen then there were prior to the Russian intervention which in turn suggests that when it comes to the war on terror, Moscow, not Washington, is clearly taking the lead.
With all of that in mind we present the following clip which purports to show a Russian strike on a “militant convoy.”