Terrorists, no doubt

Re: “Russian raids on prison kill dozens”, ( BP, Jan 11)

The article appeared uncertain over acknowledging al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organisation (mentioned as one of the other “terrorist” groups” with quotation marks as if it was an NGO-like group with a vague status).

As recent Bangkok Post contributors rose doubts about the status of al-Nusra Front, I would like to clarify that on May 31, 2013, the UN Security Council blacklisted al-Nusra Front as an alias of al-Qaeda with none of the 15 council members objecting to the resolution.

Meanwhile, all members of the counterterrorist coalition unambiguously designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organisation, and all the UN member states are obliged to ban its activity both domestically and abroad.

Therefore, there should be no hesitations in referring to al-Nusra Front as a terrorist grouping to be decisively confronted.

Hence, the strike carried out by Russian forces against the al-Nusra-run infrastructure on Jan 9 mentioned in an article “Russian raids on prison kill dozens”, was absolutely justified.

In this regard, it would be appropriate to share some statistics on the Russian Air Force operation in Syria, which speaks for itself.

Since Sept 30, 2015 the Russian air force has executed more than 4,000 flights and destroyed over 8,000 targets in Syria with the first two weeks of year 2016 seeing 311 flights with 1097 targets eliminated.

The Russian air force provided support for the Syrian army and opposition forces fighting against ISIS which allowed them to liber- ate over 153 settlements in Syria formerly occupied by the terrorists.

KIRILL BARSKY

Ambassador of Russia