Wednesday, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported that the Russian airstrikes that started in Syria today are not targeting ISIS, but instead civilians opposed to President Bashar al-Assad.
Mitchell said, “The president of Russia went to the parliament and got approval very quickly. They cut off any live coverage of the debate there. He got the parliamentary approval, and then jets started flying. And according to all reports from Paris, from here, from around the world, what we are seeing is attacks at least on one area that is civilian. That is an area of homes which is populated by rebel groups, not by ISIS, where Putin got the authority to go against ISIS, which he claims he needed — and you know that’s a rubber stamp in Moscow. He’s actually going after Assad’s opposition there on the ground, according to all the reports that we’ve seen, and this would be very disturbing indeed because this is contrary to his claim that he’s assembled a coalition to go after ISIS. He’s really helping to prop up Assad.”
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