URGENT: Russian Pilot Rescued by Iran's General Soleimani
Thu Nov 26, 2015 1:40
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940905000553

TEHRAN (FNA - Fars news agency)- Russian sources revealed on Thursday that
the pilot of the Russian Su-24 jet that was shot down by Turkey over the
Syrian airspace on Tuesday was rescued in an operation by Iran's globally
renowned IRGC Qods Force Commander Major General Soleimani.

On Tuesday, a Russian Su-24 bomber jet crashed in Syria. Russian President
Vladimir Putin said that the plane was downed by an air-to-air missile
launched by a Turkish F-16 jet over Syrian territory, falling 4 kilometers
(2.5 miles) from the Turkish border.

The crew of the plane ejected and one pilot was killed by fire from the
ground, according to the Russian General Staff. The co-pilot Captain
Konstantin Murahtin survived. But the story of how he survived in a land
surrounded by various types of terrorist groups for tens of kilometers was
unknown until today.

Emad Abshenas, a reporter for Russia's state-run Sputnik news agency, wrote
a piece in the Persian-language website of the Russian agency quoting the
entire story from a senior Syrian officer.

"I contacted one of the Syrian officers who is my old friend and is
stationed in Lattakia and asked him to tell me the story, and here is what
he said," Abshenas mentioned.

After the downing of the Russian fighter jet, the Russian helicopters took
off immediately to save the pilot but they faced the heavy fire power of FSA
(or the so-called moderate opposition, the Free Syrian Army, supported by
the West) and the Turkey-back Turkmens who targeted the helicopter with
missiles and advanced weapons that they have gained recently. During the
operations one Russian aid worker was killed.

Credible information was obtained that a number of special Turkish units had
been sent to the scene to take the Russian pilot captive to blackmail Russia
later. While the Russians were planning for another operations to free the
pilot immediately, General Soleimani contacted them and proposed them that a
special task force unit be formed of Hezbollah's special forces and Syrian
commandos who have been trained by Iran and are fully familiar with the
geographical situation of the region to be tasked with the ground operations
and Russia provide them with air cover and satellite intelligence.

Soleimani promised them to return the Russian pilot safe and sound; a
promise that was kept in the end, according to the Syrian officer.

After tracing the place of the Russian pilot using his GPS, it was revealed
that the pilot was being kept in a place 6km behind the frontline of the
clashes between the Syrian army and the opposition.

Six fighters of Hezbollah's special operation unit and 18 Syrian commandos
approached the frontline to carry out the operations and the Russian air
force and helicopters concurrently created hellfire in the region and
destroyed the terrorists' headquarters in a way that most of the enemy
forces deployed in the region fled the scene and the ground was paved for
the special unit's advance.

The Syrian officer added that every move of the special units was monitored
and covered precisely by the Russian satellites in a way that the slightest
moves made 100 meters away from the area of operation was reported to them
and every moment of the operation was reported to a very high-raking
official in the Kremlin (that he thinks was president Putin) and it was
clear that he was monitoring the entire operations through satellites from
Moscow.

According to the officer who called for anonymity, the operation later
turned into a hunt of the terrorists in the operation zone by the Russian
air force from the sky and by Brigadier General Soleimani's operations units
on the ground.

The Syrian officer believed that the Russians also launched strong
electronic warfare immediately to blind all enemies' satellites and
communication equipment in areas several kilometers away from the
operational zone and when the enemies came to realize something was
underway, the operations had ended. The electronic warfare was launched
since the Russians were concerned that the western satellites would leak the
operation to the terrorists.

Finally, the special unit saved the pilot after infiltrating 6km behind the
enemy lines, killing the terrorists operating in there and destroying their
hi-tech equipment.

The interesting point is that all the 24 members of the special units along
with the pilot returned to their base without even one injury after
fulfilling the dangerous mission.

According to the senior Syrian officer, one of the reasons for the success
of these operations was the difference between Turkey and the terrorists
over the fate of the Russian pilot as the Turks wanted him alive to use him
for political blackmailing against the Russia. While the terrorists
stationed in the region intended to burn him alive like what did to the
Jordanian pilot to fill the hearts of other Russian pilots with fright. And
this rift paved the ground for rescue operations some golden hours. Since
the opposition never imagined that such a rapid planning and action by the
rescue squads would be possible, given the complicated nature of such
operations.

The Syrian officer said that General Soleimani insisted to supervise the
details of the operations at the head of his forces and stayed in the
operations room until he came to rest assured of their success.

Abshenas then comes out of the report with a number of interesting points,
saying:

1. General Soleimani is fully healthy and is actively commanding
operations in the frontline of the war against terrorists and responds
rumors about himself with action and not by words and slogans.
2. There is no extremist and moderate oppositions in Syria; all of them
are terrorists appearing in the public in different clothes and under
different masks.
3. The Group 4+1 cannot trust other countries in any field and they
should rely on themselves to eliminate the terrorists in the region based on
their own specified plans.
4. Iran and Russia's operational coordination in Syria is highly
integrated and can break all enemies' fronts.
5. Most of the FSA's Syrian members had withdrawn from the region after
they came under Russia's airstrikes and the commandos fought non-Syrian
forces who were using classic military tactics and not guerilla warfare and
therefore, they could well be Turkish militaries or army forces of other
countries. The commandos, of course, had no other choice but to kill them
given the importance of rapid action in the operations and they didn’t had
enough time to hold them captive.

6. The terrorists present in the region possessed very modern and
advanced military equipment for ground-to-ground and ground-to-air warfare
which are not even supplied to a large number of countries which are
Washington's NATO allies.
7. According to informed sources who had traced the wireless contacts
between the opposition forces, the Arabic, Turkish, Russian and French are
respectively the most frequently used languages by the terrorists, revealing
that the countries which are mostly posed to the danger of the return of
these terrorists and shows that Russia is forced to continue fight until the
complete annihilation of the terrorists in Syria to safeguard its own
national security.