Michael J. Totten writes at World Affairs Journal, mostly about the Middle East which is his area of expertise. Here he reports American and American-allied forces in Syria killed some 200-300 Russian ‘mercenaries’ attacking a town called Deir Ezzor, described as “the largest in Eastern Syria.”
Totten leaves no doubt he considers the wounded and killed to be out-of-uniform members of the Russian armed forces, operating under the aegis of a Moscow-based merc outfit called the Wagner Group. Its client is not, as you might suppose, the Assad regime or Iranians, but the Russian Defense Ministry.
The story got little play in our press because no Americans were KIA or WIA. Both the U.S. and Russia have been at pains to downplay the seriousness of the occurrence, neither wants it to escalate into a Russo-American hot war.
If we needed another reminder of Putin’s fondness for deniable “hybrid warfare,” this is such an example. This one didn’t turn out well for him, what happens if he gets lucky next time and the dead are ours?
