** How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Russia http://russia-insider.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fa2faf7034c3c3c413cb3652f&id=1df7a68c38&e=5110f4b440 ------------------------------------------------------------ by Paul Goncharoff on Wed, Mar 29, 2017 Editor's Note: This is a truly insightful and entertaining firsthand account of Russia through the eyes of someone who, like so many of us, was brought up to loathe the "Russkies". Find a comfortable chair, pour yourself a drink, and enjoy! As a native New Yorker, brought up in the 1950s and 60s, I damn well knew what those Russkies were; pinkos, spies, commissars and worse! At public school I regularly had to squat under my desk while the nuclear attack alarms went off, all the while our homeroom teacher barked at us to make sure our eyes were closed and our faces turned away from the windows. All that bother because the communists were especially intent on turning our school into a thermonuclear barbeque. This is a harsh indictment against the USA, assuming true: ** Russian General: US Trying to Destroy Syria's Critical Infrastructure http://russia-insider.us9.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=fa2faf7034c3c3c413cb3652f&id=5a3729db2e&e=5110f4b440 ------------------------------------------------------------ by RI Staff on Wed, Mar 29, 2017 Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said on Tuesday that U.S.-led coalition airstrikes were intentionally targeting critical infrastructure in Syria — which could lead to major ecological and humanitarian catastrophes. According to General Rudskoi, [The U.S.-led coalition is] trying to “completely destroy critical infrastructure in Syria and complicate post-war reconstruction as much as possible.” ** US Proxies Set Stage for Syria Balkanization http://russia-insider.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=fa2faf7034c3c3c413cb3652f&id=89a6a2b8c9&e=5110f4b440 ------------------------------------------------------------ by Matthew Allen on Wed, Mar 29, 2017 A leading Kurdish politician has confirmed that "the northern Syrian city of Raqqa is expected to join a decentralized system of government being set up by Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies once it is freed from Islamic State," according to Reuters. Saleh Muslim, the co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish PYD party, made his comments on the same day that a U.S.-led operation near Raqqa blocked "any advance by Syrian government forces from the west". In other words, the U.S. has reserved Raqqa for its proxies. ** Russian Air Force Achieves New High Score in Al-Qaeda Whack-a-Mole http://russia-insider.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=fa2faf7034c3c3c413cb3652f&id=eb0a80c110&e=5110f4b440 ------------------------------------------------------------ by RI Staff on Wed, Mar 29, 2017 Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), "al-Qaeda's latest incarnation in Syria", has spent the last week dodging Russian and Syrian airstrikes near Hama. It wasn't supposed to be this way. The coalition of head-choppers had assembled an army of 10,000 fanatics to storm Hama and turn it into a "moderate" paradise. But they forgot about "Russian meddling".