PRESS RELEASE

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Shoigu: U.S. Has Refused To Cooperate with Russia Against Terrorism

Jan. 10, 2017 (EIRNS)—U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, in what was likely his swan song for the television media before he leaves office on Jan. 20, claimed, during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Jan. 8, that Russia has done "virtually zero" against ISIS in Syria and has made ending the civil war in Syria much harder.

"Yesterday I listened to a speech by one of my foreign counterparts in a faraway country," said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at the Defense Ministry in Moscow, this morning.

"He said that Russia’s contribution to the struggle against terrorism in Syria and in the region was equal to zero. I might have subscribed to what he said in a sense only if a) that counterpart of mine had not picked the wrong country; and b) had been more accurate in his comments,"

he said.

Russia, Shoigu stressed, has done a great deal to fight against terrorism, but it’s done it without the cooperation of the U.S.-led coalition.

"We have coped with the main task that the supreme commander-in-chief had set to us last year," he said.

"However hard it might have been for us, however greatly we might need support from the international coalition, which in fact has not only achieved nothing but even turned things for the worse, to our deep regret we saw no support from it,"

Shoigu said.