Author: Steven Sahiounie

The Turkish Defenсe Ministry has ordered to minimise the movement of its military in Syria due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Due to the coronavirus epidemic, a decision has been made to minimise the troops’ movements in the zones of military operations in Syria if it is not essential”, the Ministry said. The Turkish military, which operates 12 observation posts in Idlib to monitor a 2018 de-escalation agreement, intervened in early February to push back Syrian troops who had been trying to recapture Idlib Province since mid-December. On 5 March, Russia and Turkey managed to implement a ceasefire in Syria to stop the fighting in…

In late March, the US military deployed its Patriot missile defence system to the Ayn al-Asad base in Iraq in a move to “protect against another potential Iranian attack”. Reuters on Monday reported, citing its sources, that missiles hit near sites of foreign and state-run oil companies in Basra, Iraq. No casualties have been reported so far. According to police, the missiles were Katyushas launched at around 3 a.m. local time and hit the Burjesia residential and operations headquarters west of Basra. At the same time, the Iraqi military stated that the rockets hit near US-based Halliburton company site. The strike on…

by Svetlana Ekimenko For years, “gold bugs” – investors encouraging buying precious metals at low prices as a hedge against future global economic risks, were shunned amidst consistently rallying global equities markets. “Gold bug” analysts who have long advocated investing in gold and silver ahead of an allegedly looming “financial apocalypse” appear to be correct as markets crash and the accumulation of physical metals is predicted as likely to pay off in a big way, writes Bloomberg. “We’ve been trying to warn people that something like this would happen”, said Jim Rickards, the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next…

The day before, it was reported that the main participants in the OPEC+ group supported the idea of meeting on 6 April to discuss cutting oil production. The Kremlin on Sunday stated that Russia never supported the idea of abandoning the OPEC+ oil output cut deal, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin is eager to have constructive negotiations. Speaking further, the Kremlin stated that an increase in oil output would lead to very low oil prices, which wouldn’t benefit any country. Oil prices suffered their worst decline in decades in March after Russia and Saudi Arabia failed to reach a deal on…

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have adopted fresh measures to tackle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic amid an uptick in the number patients in both Persian Gulf countries. Saudi Interior Ministry announced a lockdown and a partial curfew in seven neighborhoods of the port city of Jeddah starting on Saturday. The ministry said in a statement that residents in those districts could only go out for grocery shopping and medical care between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. local time and that movement in and out of the areas will be restricted. The kingdom had already taken similar measures in Dammam, Ta’if and Qatif to rein…

Libyan government forces have reportedly shot down three Sukhoi fighter jets operated by rebel forces under the command of renegade general Khalifa Haftar. The Turkish state news agency Anadolu said the forces of the internationally-recognized government of Libya shot down three Sukhoi-22 warplanes on Friday, also targeting several tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, and heavy weapons belonging to Haftar’s militia. The government forces had a day earlier announced the destruction of three fuel tankers that had been on their way to supply the rebels in the south of the capital, Tripoli. The Libyan forces also said they had targeted an ammunition…

The number of Syrian militants who were killed fighting for the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya has risen to 165, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) revealed on April 5. According to the London-based monitoring group, nine militants from the Mu’tasim Division, the Sultan Murad Division, the Northern Hawks Brigade, the al-Hamza Divsion and the Suleyman Shah Brigade were killed during clashes with the Libyan National Army (LNA). “According to the observatory’s sources, the dead [militants] were killed during clashes on the axes of Salah Al-Din neighborhood south of Tripoli, the Ramla axis near Tripoli airport and…

The so-called US-led military coalition purportedly formed to fight the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group has reportedly airdropped military and logistical equipment to oil-rich areas it has occupied in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, as Washington and some of its regional allies vie to seize oil reserves and plunder natural resources in the war-battered country. The Arabic-language Enab Baladi weekly newspaper, citing a video published by the local North Press news agency, reported that a military transport aircraft offloaded its cargo near al-Omar oil field in the eastern countryside of Dayr al-Zawr. The report noted that the operation took place late on Saturday. Back…

The Russian Defenсe Ministry’s centre for Syrian reconciliation has not registered any fire coming from militants in Idlib over the past 24 hours, the centre’s head, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, said on Saturday. “Over the past day no instances of fire from the side of the illegal armed groups controlled by Turkey have been registered. A special round-the-clock communications channel for coordination between the Russian centre for reconciliation and the Turkish side continues to function”, Zhuravlev said at a daily briefing. Russian army planes also carried out patrols along a fixed route in northern Syria. The reconciliation centre once again…

Iran remains the country worst hit by the new virus in the Middle East, with the death toll climbing to 3,452 on Sunday. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has stated that “low-risk economic activities” will resume in the country as of 11 April amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. According to him, the move will be implemented “under the supervision” of the Iranian Health Ministry. “Two thirds of all Iranian government employees will work out of the office from Saturday […] the decision does not contradict stay at home advice by the health authorities”, Rouhani pointed out. The statement comes after he said…