These days, there's neither a shortage of Syrian conflict propaganda, nor a lack of international players chiming in. But in case you forgot, a video this week serves as a pretty good reminder.
The video itself appears to be from 2013, but was uploaded to YouTube this week. Complete with a promise to "make short work of Turkish/Israeli jets if they have the balls to interfere with Syrian territories," the footage purports to show an example of a Mikoyan MiG-31 fighter jet, six of which have reportedly been delivered to the Syrian Army from Moscow this week.
Iranian state news agency Press TV said the Russian shipment was part of a deal between Moscow and Damascus forged back in 2007. And while neither side has confirmed their role here so far, it's definitely not the first time Russian crafts have shown up on MENA battlefields — Moscow shipped Mi-28 attack helicopters to Baghdad in 2014.
It's also not the first time this particular Russian jet has headlined in 2015. Large-scale military training operations carried out by the Russian military with the crafts had Western countries worried in May. Back then, a NATO official told CNN the following on the condition of anonymity.
“Three of the [training exercises] have included over 80,000 troops. Some of them have been used to deploy troops to annex Crimea, mass forces on Ukraine’s border and support the [pro-Moscow rebels in Ukraine].”
Apparently, now the same could also be true in Syria. And in a war increasingly defined by external players, that could mean big changes for people on the ground.
