On Friday, during the meeting between the President and the representatives from the Russian Security Council, Minister of Defence, Sergey Shoygu, reported about a successful air strike by Russian VKS on the terrorists' positions around Syria's Raqqa. Among the neutralized militants, there were, supposedly, ISIS leaders.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Army continues attacking the barbarian pseudo-Caliphate. The terrorists are fleeing, and there are less residential areas, where they can put up fortifications. Our military correspondent Evgeny Poddubny reports from Syria. Government forces continue active combat offensives in the North, in the South, and in the center of the country.
Under the approaching threat from the Syrian Army, the militants leave their well-fortified positions. Storm groups, with the support of the Army Air Force, kill ISIS terrorists and take over vantage points, which allowed the pseudo-Caliphate militants to control large territories in the Syrian desert. The initiative is on the government forces' side, basically in all directions. Only last week, militants lost several strategically essential residential areas. The Arak settlement, where just recently the Islamic state militants were located. The village is located on the Palmyra-Deir ez-Zor highway.
Previously, the vantage points around the village, and Arak itself formed a united defense line for the pseudo-Caliphate militants. Now, the Syrian Army continues attacking, and on the way of the division that battles the so-called Islamic State, is the town of Al-Sukhnah, further down is Deir ez-Zor.
The militants retreated from Arak. The village was used by the terrorists as a resting place, a temporary ISIS control center was located here. Civilians fled the village 2 years ago, when the militants first took over Palmyra. Meanwhile, government forces are amplifying attacks in the south of the route. Here, the radicals will soon have to abandon the T-3 station. The Syrian Army is also successful in the North. Part of the route is under the control of government forces. Right now, the militant troops must retreat to avoid being surrounded in the future.
The terrorists' situation is worsened by the fact, that the government forces took back control over the territory from the Eastern Qalamoun to the Iraqi border, in spite of the confrontation by the New Syrian Army — it's the pro-American armed formation — and the western air coalition, whose planes have struck the columns of government forces many times. This is a stronghold not far from the Syrian-Iraqi border. Here, soldiers prevent the terrorists' attempts to redeploy forces between the two countries, between the Central and the most Southern parts of Syria. Militants try to attack us, but they don't succeed, even though they still have enough strength to strike. They use anti-tank controlled missiles and shells, recoilless guns. After deescalation zones became active in Syria, official Damascus was able to transfer reserves from Idlib and from the capital region to organize offensives against the pseudo-Caliphate militants.
Syrian Army's success is most of all awaited in Deir ez-Zor where nearly 80,000 civilians are held hostage by the terrorists. The city has been under a total siege for 3 years. This week it became known, that the Russian troops disrupted the breakthrough of ISIS terrorists onto the defense lines of the Syrian Army's post in the besieged city. R
emote-controlled Intel drones detected the pseudo-Caliphate troops, and Russian planes performed pre-emptive strikes. ISIS field commanders, Abu Omar Al-Beljiki and Abu Yasin Al-Masri were neutralized, along with another 180 terrorists and 16 units of equipment, as well as the control center for the militants and, an ammo warehouse. And most importantly, it became known, that Russian pilots were able to, possibly, behead the Islamic State.
The Russian military possibly neutralized the head of ISIS. At the end of May, Russian Aerospace Forces' planes conducted a bomb strike against a building, which is located in Raqqa's southern outskirts in Syria, at the time when the so-called pseudo-Caliphate military council was being held there.
According to the Russian Defense Department, at this time the most wanted terrorist in the world could have been there at the time, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Two planes, Su-34 and Su-35 struck the terrorists' headquarters at night on May 28. We have footage from a Russian drone. As a result, high-ranking commanders of the pseudo-Caliphate were neutralized, 30 middle-ranking commanders, and almost a battalion of rank-and-file fighters. So far, there are only indirect signs that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was either killed or seriously wounded.
After the Russian strike, the terrorist leader hasn't appeared in public once, there wasn't even a video message in honor of the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Earlier, Baghdadi did not miss such opportunities to raise the terrorist group's morale. It is well-known that at the meeting of ISIS's so-called military council, the leaders discussed militants' retreat from Raqqa along the southern corridor, towards Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor.
Kurdish troops, which are storming Raqqa, left the southern corridor to the terrorists. But, despite this, and in Syria's center, the defense of ISIS fighters isn't able to withstand the government forces' pressure.
