US Airstrikes kill 60+ Syrian Army Soldiers, Injures 100 & ISIS gains territory in E. Syria; UN Aid Convoy Attacked

[LeJusticier]

Only narrow minded relied mainstream medias including Aljazeera.

read this:
By Prof. Tim Anderson

The sudden reversion of Washington to a ‘war on terror’ pretext for intervention in Syria has confused western audiences. For three years they watched ‘humanitarian intervention’ stories, which poured contempt on the Syrian President’s assertion that he was fighting foreign backed terrorists. Now the US claims to be leading the fight against those same terrorists.

But what do Syrians think, and why do they continue to support a man the western powers have claimed is constantly attacking and terrorising ‘his own people’? To understand this we must consider the huge gap between the western caricature of Bashar al Assad the ‘brutal dictator’ and the popular and urbane figure within Syria.

If we believed most western media reports we would think President Assad has launched repeated and indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, including the gassing of children. We might also think he heads an ‘Alawi regime’, where a 12% minority represses a Sunni Muslim majority, crushing a popular ‘revolution’ which, only recently, has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists.

The central problem with these portrayals is Bashar’s great popularity at home. The fact that there is popular dissatisfaction with corruption and cronyism, and that an authoritarian state maintains a type of personality cult, does not negate the man’s genuine popularity. His strong win in Syria’s first multi-candidate elections in June dismayed his regional enemies, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey; but it did not stop their aggression.

Syrians saw things differently. Bashar was thought to maintain his father’s pluralist and nationalist tradition, while modernising and holding out the promise of political reform. Opinion polls in Syria had shown major dissatisfaction with corruption and political cronyism, mixed views on the economy but strong satisfaction with stability, women’s rights and the country’s independent foreign policy. The political reform rallies of 2011 – countered by pro-government rallies and quickly overshadowed by violent insurrection – were not necessarily anti Bashar.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other sectarian Islamist groups did hate him, along with the secular state. Yet even these enemies, in their better moments, recognised the man’s popularity. In late 2011 a Doha Debates poll (created by the Qatari monarchy, a major backer of the Muslim Brotherhood) showed 55% of Syrians wanted Assad to stay.

Armed Islamists went further. In 2012 Reuters, the UK Guardian and Time magazine reported three ‘Free Syrian Army’ (FSA) leaders in Aleppo saying the Syrian President had about ‘70 percent’ support; or that the local people, ‘all of them, are loyal to the criminal Bashar, they inform on us’; or that they are ‘all informers … they hate us. They blame us for the destruction’. Unpopularity, of course, is fatal to a revolution; to a religious fanatic it is merely inconvenient. All three FSA groups were Islamists on good terms with al Qaeda.

None of these revelations changed the western media reliance on Muslim Brotherhood-aligned sources, ‘activists’ or ‘moderate rebels’. They relied, in particular, on the UK-based Rami Abdul Rahman, who calls himself the ‘Syrian Observatory of Human Rights’. Such sources kept ‘Bashar the Monster’ alive, outside Syria.

Central to the Bashar myth are two closely related stories: that of the ‘moderate rebel’ and the story that conjures ‘Assad loyalists’ or ‘regime forces’ in place of a large, dedicated national army, with broad popular support. To understand the Bashar myth we have to consider the Syrian Arab Army.

At over half a million, the Army is so large that most Syrian communities have strong family links, including with those fallen in the war. There are regular ceremonies for families of these ‘martyrs’, with thousands proudly displaying photos of their loved ones. Further, most of the several million Syrians, displaced by the conflict, have not left the country but rather have moved to other parts under Army protection. This is not really explicable if the Army were indeed engaged in ‘indiscriminate’ attacks on civilians. A repressive army invokes fear and loathing in a population, yet in Damascus one can see that people do not cower as they pass through the many army road blocks, set up to protect against ‘rebel’ car bombs.

Syrians know there were abuses against demonstrators in early 2011; they also know that the President dismissed the Governor of Dara for this. They know that the armed insurrection was not a consequence of the protests but rather a sectarian insurrection that took cover under those rallies. Saudi official Anwar el-Eshki admitted to the BBC that his country had provided weapons to Islamists in Dara, and their rooftop sniping closely resembled the Muslim Brotherhood’s failed insurrection in Hama, back in 1982. Hafez al Assad crushed that revolt in a few weeks. Of the incident US intelligence said total casualties were probably ‘about 2,000’ including ‘300 to 400’ members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s elite militia. The Brotherhood and many western sources have since inflated those numbers, calling it a ‘massacre’. Armed Islamists posing as civilian victims have a long history in Syria.

Quite a number of Syrians have criticised President Assad to me, but not in the manner of the western media. They say they wanted him to be as firm as his father. Many in Syria regard him as too soft, leading to the name ‘Mr Soft Heart’. Soldiers in Damascus told me there is an Army order to make special efforts to capture alive any Syrian combatant. This is controversial, as many regard them as traitors, no less guilty than foreign terrorists.

What of the ‘moderate rebels’? Before the rise of ISIS, back in late 2011, the largest FSA brigade, Farouk, the original ‘poster boys’ of the ‘Syrian Revolution’, took over parts of Homs city. One US report called them ‘legitimate nationalists … pious rather than Islamists and not motivated by sectarianism’. The International Crisis Group suggested that Farouk might be ‘pious’ rather than Islamist. The Wall Street Journal also called them ‘pious Sunnis’ rather than Islamists. The BBC called them ‘moderately Islamist’.

All this was quite false. Syrians in Homs said Farouk went into the city with the genocidal slogan: ‘Alawis to the grave, Christians to Beirut’. Shouting ‘God is Great’ they blew up Homs hospital, because it had been treating soldiers. The churches blamed Farouk for the ethnic cleansing of more than 50,000 Christians from the city, and for the imposition of an Islamist tax. Journalist Radwan Mortada says most Farouk members were sectarian Salafis, armed and funded by Saudi Arabia. They later happily worked with the various al Qaeda groups, and were first to blame their own atrocities on the Army.

Let’s consider some key accusations against the Syrian Arab Army. In May 2012, days before a UN Security Council meeting set to debate possible intervention in Syria, there was a terrible massacre of over 100 villagers at Houla. Western governments immediately blamed the Syrian Government, which in turn accused the foreign-backed terrorists. Western officials at first blamed Army shelling, changing their story when it was found most had died from close quarter injuries. One UN report (UNSMIS) was shelved while another (CoI), co-chaired by US diplomat Karen Koning AbuZayd, blamed un-named pro-government ‘thugs’. No motive was given.

Although the Houla massacre did not result in a Libyan-styled intervention, because of opposition at the UN from Russia and China, controversy raged over the authors of this atrocity. German and Russian journalists, along with the Mother Superior of a Monastery, managed to interview survivors who said that a large Farouk battalion, led by Abdul Razzaq Tlass, had overwhelmed five small army posts and slaughtered the villagers. The gang had sought out pro-government and Alawi families, along with some Sunni families who had taken part in recent elections.

One year later a detailed, independent report (by Correggia, Embid, Hauben and Larson) documented how the second UN Houla investigation (the CoI) was tainted. Rather than visiting Syria they had relied on Farouk leaders and associates to link them to witnesses. They ignored another dozen direct witnesses who contradicted the ‘rebel’ story. In short, they tried to bury a real crime with identified perpetrators and a clear motive. As Adam Larson later wrote, the ‘official’ Houla massacre story was shown to be ‘extremely ambiguous at best and at worst a fairly obvious crime of the US-supported Contras’.

Houla set the tone for a series of similar ‘false flag’ massacre claims. When 245 people were murdered in Daraya (August 2012), media reports citing ‘opposition’ activists’ said that ‘Assad’s army has committed a massacre’. This was contradicted by British journalist Robert Fisk, who wrote that the FSA had slaughtered kidnapped civilian and off-duty soldier hostages, after a failed attempt to swap them for prisoners held by the army. Similarly, when 120 villagers were slaughtered at Aqrab (December 2013) the New York Times headline read ‘Members of Assad’s Sect Blamed in Syria Killings’. In fact, as British journalist Alex Thompson discovered, it was the victims who were from the President’s Alawi community. Five hundred Alawis had been held by FSA groups for nine days before the fleeing gangs murdered a quarter of them. Yet, without close examination, each accusation seemed to add to the crimes of the Syrian Army, at least to those outside Syria.

Another line of attack was that there had been ‘indiscriminate’ bombing of rebel held areas, resulting in civilian casualties. The relevant question was, how did they dislodge armed groups from urban centres? Those interested can see some detail of this in the liberation of Qusayr, a town near the Lebanese border which had been occupied by Farouk and other salafi groups, including foreigners. The Army carried out ‘surgical attacks’ but, in May 2013, after the failure of negotiations, decided on all-out assault. They dropped leaflets from planes, calling on civilians to evacuate. Anti-government groups were said to have stopped many from leaving, while an ‘activist’ spokesman claimed there was ‘no safe exit for civilians’. In opportunistic criticism, the US State Department expressed ‘deep concern’ over the leafleting, claiming that ‘ordering the displacement of the civilian population’ showed ‘the regime’s ongoing brutality’.

As it happened, on June 5 the Army backed by Hezbollah, liberated Qusayr, driving the remnants of Farouk FSA and their al Qaeda partners into Lebanon. This operation, in principle at least, was what one would have expected of any army facing terrorist groups embedded in civilian areas. At this point the war began turning decisively in Syria’s favour.

Accusations of ‘indiscriminate bombing’ recur. In opportunist questioning, more than a year later, British journalist John Snow demanded of Syrian Presidential adviser Dr Bouthaina Shaaban why the Syrian Army had not driven ISIS from Aleppo? A few questions later he attacked the Army for its ‘indiscriminate’ bombing of that same city. The fact is, most urban fighting in Syria is by troops on the ground.

The most highly politicised atrocity was the chemical attack of August 2013, in the Eastern Ghouta region, just outside Damascus. The Syrian Government had for months been complaining about terrorist gas attacks and had invited UN inspectors to Damascus. As these inspectors arrived ‘rebel’ groups, posted videos on dead children online, blaming the Syrian Government for a new massacre. The US government and the Washington based Human Rights Watch group were quick to agree. The UN investigation of Islamist chemical attacks was shelved and attention moved to the gassed children. The western media demanded military intervention. A major escalation of the war was only defused by Russian intervention and a proposal that Syria hand over its chemical weapons stockpile; a stockpile it maintained had never been used.

Saturation reporting of the East Ghouta incident led many western journalists to believe that the charges against the Syrian Government were proven. To the contrary, those claims were systematically demolished by a series of independent reports. Very soon after, a Jordan-based journalist reported that residents in the East Ghouta area blamed ‘Saudi Prince Bandar … of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaeda linked rebel group’. Next, a Syrian group, led by Mother Agnes Mariam, provided a detailed examination of the video evidence, saying the massacre videos preceded the attack and used ‘staged’ and ‘fake’ images. Detailed reports also came from outside Syria. Veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that US intelligence evidence had been fabricated and ‘cherry picked … to justify a strike against Assad’. A Turkish lawyers and writers group said ‘most of the crimes’ against Syrian civilians, including the East Ghouta attack, were committed by ‘armed rebel forces in Syria’. The Saudi backed FSA group Liwa al Islam was most likely responsible for the chemical attack on Ghouta. A subsequent UN report did not allocate blame but confirmed that chemical weapons had been used on at least five occasions in Syria. On three occasions they were used ‘against soldiers and civilians’. The clear implication was that these were anti-government attacks by rebels. MIT investigators Lloyd and Postol concluded that the Sarin gas ‘could not possibly have been fired … from Syrian Government controlled area’.

Despite the definitive nature of these reports, combined, neither the US Government nor Human Rights Watch have retracted or apologised for their false accusations. Indeed, western government and media reports repeat the claims as though they were fact, even falsely enlisting UN reports, at times, as corroboration.

——————-

When I met President Assad, with a group of Australians, his manner was entirely consistent with the pre-2011 image of the mild-mannered eye doctor. He expressed deep concern with the impact on children of witnessing terrorist atrocities while fanatics shout ‘God is Great’. The man is certainly no brute, in the manner of Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush.

The key factor in Syria’s survival has been the cohesion, dedication and popular support for the Army. Syrians know that their Army represents pluralist Syria and has been fighting sectarian, foreign backed terrorism. This Army did not fracture on sectarian lines, as the Takfiris had hoped, and defections have been small, certainly less than 2%.

Has the Army committed abuses? Probably, but mainly against the armed groups. There is some evidence of execution of foreign terrorists. That is certainly a crime, but probably has a fair degree of popular support in Syria, at the moment. The main constraint on such abuses seems to be the army order from ‘Mr Soft Heart’, to save the lives of Syrian rebels.

However, despite the repeated claims by sectarian Islamists and their western backers, there is no convincing evidence that the Syrian Army has deliberately bombed and gassed civilians. Nor would there be a motive for it. Nor does the behaviour of people on the streets support it. Most Syrians do not blame their army for the horrendous violence of this war, but rather the foreign backed terrorists.

These are the same terrorists backed by the governments of the USA, Britain and France, hiding behind the fig-leaf of the mythical ‘moderate rebel’ while reciting their catalogue of fabricated accusations.

The high participation rate (73%) in June’s presidential elections, despite the war, was at least as significant as the strong vote (88%) Bashar received. Even the BBC could not hide the large crowds that came out to vote, especially those that mobbed the Syrian Embassy in Beirut.

Participation rates are nowhere as near in the US; indeed no western leader can claim such a strong democratic mandate as this ‘dictator’. The size of Bashar’s win underlines a stark reality: there never was a popular uprising against this man; and his popularity has grown.

Tim Anderson is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney. He has researched the Syrian conflict since 2011 and visited Syria in December 2013

[gurey25]

So Gegigoor and Sahal.

let me get this straight.

You believe that the West is really committed to fighting Islamists, and is not putting on an act?
You also believe that there is secret cooperation between Iran and the west to fight Sunni?

how can you ignore the following facts
1. weapons and fighters and supplies are supplied by Saudia, Qatar and cross through the borders of Jordan and Turkey.
all these are allied with the west, infact closely alligned with the west, and cannot do any of this without the full consent of the
west.
2.The US and ISreal have been hellbent on attacking IRan for over a decade, and only skillfull diplomacy and by the Iranians and the
Russians, along with chinese backing has this been avoided. are you saying it was all an act?
3. The wests primary aim is to depose the Syrian government by any means, are you saying they are all in cahoots and also acting
and are there just to kill the sunnis together?

this is just illogical.

[gurey25]

US says it may have struck Syrian troops while targeting IS

https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-washin ... 44900.html

No wonder the Russian ambassador was pissed off,
this was blatant .
The area of the attack has been under government control for months, and the Syrian arab army was building up forces for an offensive on ISIS when this attack happened conveniently.
ISIS attacks only after the americans bombed the government positions.

It is impossible for the US to make this mistake, they have been overflying the area for weeks .

[gurey25]

Perhaps, a new development in the war where, if Syria's Sunni groups have obtained anti-air defense systems that can bring down those Assad and Russian air force, it'll indeed be a game changer. If that becomes true, it'll be a day of reckoning for the Rawaafidh, Nusayris, their grave-going Sufi admirers, and their Russian backers.

Syrian warplane shot down by Isis hours after US air attack kills Syrian government troops

Russia and Syria earlier accused the US of assisting Daesh and other extremists.


Generic photo of a Syrian warplane that was downed by rebels.Getty

By Tareq Haddad
September 18, 2016 12:31 BST
Updated 5 hr ago

slamic State (Isis) fighters have shot down a Syrian military plane on Sunday (18 Septmber), according to IS-affiliated news agency Amaq. The plane was reportedly brought down in the eastern city of Deir Al-Zour a day after US-led airstrikes killed at least 62 Syrian government fighters in the city.

"A Syrian warplane belonging to the Syrian regime was brought down when targeted by fighters from the IS (Daesh) in the city of Deir al-Zour," Amaq said in an online statement.

With a ceasefire already on shaky ground following the US strikes, the latest incident is likely to bring about further tension and finger pointing between Russia and the US.

The plane's downing comes hours after Russian military personnel accused the US of trying to strengthen the IS position in the fiercely contested city following Saturday's (17 September) bombing. Syria's Foreign Ministry made similar accusations.

"Five US aircrafts launched fierce airstrike on the Syrian Army positions in al-Tharda Mountain in the surroundings of Deir Al-Zour Airport. The attack lasted for an hour," they said in a statement, according to state-run SANA.

"The facts speak for themselves. This attack is deliberate and the US has plotted it in order to implement its strategy in continuing the terrorists' war against the Syrian army.

"The attack launched by the IS terrorists on the same site and taking control over it proves the correctness of what has been previously stated and highlights the coordination between this terrorist organization and the US."

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said the United States has "relayed our regret" for the unintentional loss of life of Syrian forces fighting the Islamic State group in the bombing.

However, she said Russia should be "embarrassed" for issuing a statement suggesting that the airstrike indicated that the U.S. was complicit in trying to help IS.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict, said the pilot of the warplane was killed.

dont get excited this was a manpad, either igla from ghadafi stockpiles, or stingers courtesy of the US, via Saudia.
They are very effective against helicopters and low flying aircraft, that dont have modern jamming systems.
This aircraft is most likely another su-22 that was hit in april, and belonging to the Syrian airforce.

I advised you not to get excited, you should be worried because more than half the Russian Su-25's have been equiped with jamming equipment, and all the Mi-28 and Hinds too. By the same time next year all Syrian gunships will also get the treatment,
the same with Su-25s. The Syrian government will be replacing the ancient Su-22, Su-11 and scrapping them.

This means no more planes hit by manpads.

The only Danger to the Syrian airforce is another US " Accident"

[Kudo]

Perhaps, a new development in the war where, if Syria's Sunni groups have obtained anti-air defense systems that can bring down those Assad and Russian air force, it'll indeed be a game changer. If that becomes true, it'll be a day of reckoning for the Rawaafidh, Nusayris, their grave-going Sufi admirers, and their Russian backers.

[/quote]
Lol @ Obtained.

Are you sure is not ISIS best friend Israel that smuggled those across the border? You dont just obtain these kinda of stuff.

[gurey25]

It appears ghaddafi was a doomsday prepper and was squirelling away weapons in massive depots all over Libya.
The rebels got their hands on thousands of manpads and atgms, and immedietly flooded the black market with them, dropping the price to the floor.
If it wasnt for a well organized smuggling operation moving the bulk of them into jordan and turkey into the hands of the rebels
Somali clans, and millitias all over the world could afford them, as the price of a stinger was as low as the price of a 22mm anti-aircraft gun, or a 50 calibar browning machine gun popular with those who use technicals.
Imagine alshabab dropping Ethiopian and Kenyan planes all over the place

More bad news for the rebels, the SAA is getting ERA( explosive reactive armour) on their T-72's
even the old kontact-5 has proven to allow T-72's to survive multiple hits from rebel missiles, while before it was one shot kill
and government armour was getting massacred.

Combined with better artillery like the TOS-1, which is really frighting and has no western equivalent.
imagine what thermobarics and incendiaries can do to an enemy out in the open.
We dont have to imagine it happened in Ukraine, where an entire brigade of the best forces the kiev regime could muster,
approached the Russian border. One single barrage of TOS-1 and an entire division was gone..

You cannot use that offensively in Syria because it is an area affect weapons, think of it as a micro-nuke
with no body surviving within a city block. That means thousands of civilians dead instantly.
You cannot hide shit like this and social media will be all over this.
but this means that there will not be any more successful offensives by the rebels, and the Syrian government requires less manpower to hold territory, saving more men for offensive purposes.

This combined with control over the air, and new mobility due to protection against missiles,
IT looks very bad for the rebels, on all fronts, more US " accidents" will not save them.

[gurey25]

Since the US will not accept defeat and go away quietly.
The only move would be to supply the latest ATGM's to the rebels, and forget about the plausible deniability.
Since the rebels are already close to exhausting their supply of missiles, something the Javelin, or the ISreali Spike would be troublesome and set back the Syrian army to back in the time before Russian intervention.
Tanks will be going up inflames all over very quickly, and the 4rth generation ATGM's like the Javelin and Spike are easier to use
and allow rebels to survive because they are fire and forget, they can fire and then run like hell.

The only way to counter them would be to introduce active defence systems like the Arena.
This is expensive and the russians are already struggling to equip their own army, and have nothing to spare the Syrians.
The only solution is Chinese intervention, they are the only ones capable of producing systems like this at below $100,000.

While there are hundreds of javelins sitting in Saudi depots, and the Turks have both the javelin and the Spike.

[smartyt]

While the US is busy helping Radical Islam in Syria they just gave them a terror attack in new york hahaha

[gegiroor]

https://twitter.com/NorthernStork/statu ... 45696?s=17

[gegiroor]

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEyes/stat ... 2677510144

[gegiroor]

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEyes/stat ... 4234166272

[gegiroor]

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEyes/stat ... 4366219264

[FAH1223]

Since the US will not accept defeat and go away quietly.
The only move would be to supply the latest ATGM's to the rebels, and forget about the plausible deniability.
Since the rebels are already close to exhausting their supply of missiles, something the Javelin, or the ISreali Spike would be troublesome and set back the Syrian army to back in the time before Russian intervention.
Tanks will be going up inflames all over very quickly, and the 4rth generation ATGM's like the Javelin and Spike are easier to use
and allow rebels to survive because they are fire and forget, they can fire and then run like hell.

The only way to counter them would be to introduce active defence systems like the Arena.
This is expensive and the russians are already struggling to equip their own army, and have nothing to spare the Syrians.
The only solution is Chinese intervention, they are the only ones capable of producing systems like this at below $100,000.

While there are hundreds of javelins sitting in Saudi depots, and the Turks have both the javelin and the Spike.

Gurey, this is probably where things are going.

I can't see the Beltway establishment just losing the rebels like this. And with a Hillary presidency and an emboldened class of neocons going into the Defense Department, you can expect more of a robust action in 2017.

Unless the Syrian army and the Russians go on a no holds barred offensive between now and January.

[gurey25]

Another move they could do is to hit a US plane over syria.
The isrealis are denying their's was shot down last week, and they can cover it up because it crashed inside their border, but the US cannot.
This would be risky though and not putins style, but if there are other "accidents" the Syrians may push hard and the Russians give permission to engage.
They could play the plausible deniability game like the US and let the missile be fired from Syrian S-300 batteries , while using
guidance from Russian ships in Latakia.
Lavrov can then come in an try to calm things down .

This would be very embarassing for the US because they would need to work overtime to spin away the fact that they are operating in Syria uninvited and illegal, and it would be impossible to sweep this under the rug.

Can US planes be shot down?
yes because they have no counter to the S-300/Panstir combo in the hands of the Syrians.
Only option old fashioned SEAD, and accepting casualties while they try to wipe out the launchers.

nah, too far fetched , this would never happen, because its a brute force approach, and not linked to any diplomatic move.
Russian strategy so far has been straight out of Sun-tzu, a series of subtle moves over a period of time, that when added up
create an unassailable position, be it diplomatic or millitary.

The above scenario is what someone like me would think of, a novice, arm chair general, with very little real time intelligence.

We can only hypothesize by trying to think like the Russians.
In this case the Russian version of a brute force attack, will not be a missile hitting a US plane.
You need to do something that will prevent the US from reacting, and accepting the reprimand quietly.

So no missile, maybe they choose a target, a US plane flying over Government held territory,
then hit it with a Krakusha electronics warfare system, full blast.
The result will be total failure of all electronics , and a crash that looks like an accident , even the ejection seat will not work.
If the US screams bloody murder, they can say they are happy for international monitors to examine the wreckage.

[FAH1223]

Another move they could do is to hit a US plane over syria.
The isrealis are denying their's was shot down last week, and they can cover it up because it crashed inside their border, but the US cannot.
This would be risky though and not putins style, but if there are other "accidents" the Syrians may push hard and the Russians give permission to engage.
They could play the plausible deniability game like the US and let the missile be fired from Syrian S-300 batteries , while using
guidance from Russian ships in Latakia.
Lavrov can then come in an try to calm things down .

This would be very embarassing for the US because they would need to work overtime to spin away the fact that they are operating in Syria uninvited and illegal, and it would be impossible to sweep this under the rug.

Can US planes be shot down?
yes because they have no counter to the S-300/Panstir combo in the hands of the Syrians.
Only option old fashioned SEAD, and accepting casualties while they try to wipe out the launchers.

nah, too far fetched , this would never happen, because its a brute force approach, and not linked to any diplomatic move.
Russian strategy so far has been straight out of Sun-tzu, a series of subtle moves over a period of time, that when added up
create an unassailable position, be it diplomatic or millitary.

The above scenario is what someone like me would think of, a novice, arm chair general, with very little real time intelligence.

We can only hypothesize by trying to think like the Russians.
In this case the Russian version of a brute force attack, will not be a missile hitting a US plane.
You need to do something that will prevent the US from reacting, and accepting the reprimand quietly.

So no missile, maybe they choose a target, a US plane flying over Government held territory,
then hit it with a Krakusha electronics warfare system, full blast.
The result will be total failure of all electronics , and a crash that looks like an accident , even the ejection seat will not work.
If the US screams bloody murder, they can say they are happy for international monitors to examine the wreckage.

What do you think of the UN Aid Convoy attack?

White Helmets/Rebels?