with the full sanction of international law. pursuant to these procedures in syria over the past year, the coalition is now conducted over 300 air targets against isil and we are in coalition with france, turkey and other countries to dramatically accelerate our efforts. this is what we will do. over the coming weeks we will be continuing our flights out of the base in turkey to apply constant pressure on isil in northwest syria. with we will be sustaining our support to anti-isil fighters in northeast syria, a n these efforts will put greater pr pressure on the operational areas of isil, and we will ensure through precision air strikes that isil leaders do not have any sanctuary, anywhere on the ground in syria. so isil will soon face
isil which is fed off of the ethic and the sectarian areas of the assad regime. it is tragic, tragic, my fellow americans that we have reached this point a syrian conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people, and created the worst are refugee crisis since world war ii and spawned a terrorist army of tens of thousands and now created a platform for a russian is a autocrat to join with the iranian thee yo krat to prop up a syrian dictator. and those words are just spoken in the last little while with senator john mccain. and with me to discuss this is are retired general james sp spider marks, and paul cruikshank, and first to you, paul, the russian general who was releasing the information on the air strikes said on the official record that they were going after isiscenters and mun
increasing pressure from multiple drirections across the battlefield in syria and iraq, but as we have said from the start, and as the geneva communique codified, this fight is not one that can be won in the military sphere. it requires a political solution to the crisis of syria. one thing is certain, the vast ma jor ma jor i majority of states around this table know that the isil force, isil, itself, cannot be defeated as long as a bashar al assad remains president of syria. it cannot happen by e definition of the lines of the battle. it cannot happen because of who has lined up with whom, and because of the nature of these protagonists. and the reason for that is defined in the beginning by how this fight, itself, began. this fight began when young people, young syrians looking
away the entire northern border from isil east of the euphrates river. at the same time we have mounted a campaign to cut the financing, and curb the freedom fighters and expose the lies that isil is perpetrating. today as we speak, south of kirkuk, kurdish peshmerga are heroically liberating villages under the cover of coalition forces. we admire the struggle that has been in legitimate opposition to assad. let me remind the council that the air operations are well ground and military procedures and firmly based in international law, and the request of neighboring states for collective self-defense under article 51 of the u.n. charter. that foundation has not changed, and we will continue our mission
conduct bombing runs inside of syria, and of course, the israelis keep close watch over that portion of the eastern mediterranean and the israelis wants to know everything in the air for their own security. we are now told that it was eight russian warplanes that took off bombing a number of targets in western central syria. this is an area that is not an isis area, as you just said. this is an area where the anti-assad, and anti-regime militias are battling the assad government, and this is going to go to what the pentagon was worried about and the u.s. had been worried about for days that the russian military buildup was aimed at the russians supporting assad and propping him up and keeping him in power and exactly what the obama administration did not want to see. but deeper than that even, the pentagon not very happy this morning. it was a couple of days of course, that president obama and president putin said that the two militaries would sit down