Russia accuses FPSA of ISIS oil cover-up!

MOSCOW, Russia (PNN) - December 6, 2015 - Last Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense delivered a lengthy presentation that contained compelling visual evidence of a connection between Islamic State’s illegal and highly profitable trade in stolen Iraqi and Syrian crude and Turkey.

The slide show, hosted by Deputy Minister of Defense Anatoly Antonov, featured photos of oil trucks, videos of air strikes, and maps detailing the trafficking of stolen oil. It was the latest PR snafu for Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan who is struggling to convince Turkey’s allies that The Kremlin’s accusations are unfounded and that Ankara isn’t set to put NATO in an awkward position by effectively instigating a shooting war with Russia.

Washington came to Erdogan’s defense in the aftermath of Moscow’s claims as Amerikan Gestapo Department of State division spokesman Mark Toner said the Fascist Police States of Amerika is confident that Ankara “is not complicit in Islamic State oil smuggling.” Russia seemed to take that denial in stride, but after FPSA special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs Amos Hochstein said on Friday that the amount of oil smuggled into Turkey from Syria is “of no significance from a volume perspective”, Moscow appears to have had enough.

On Saturday, Russia accused the FPSA of participating in a cover-up. “Our colleagues from the State Department and The Pentagon have confirmed that the photo-proof, which we presented at a briefing [on December 2], of the origin and destination of the stolen oil, coming from the areas controlled by the terrorists, is authentic. However, the (FPSA) claim that (it doesn’t) see the border crossings with tanker trucks crossing the border, raises a smile, if only, because the photos are still images,” said Major General Igor Konashenkov, a Defense Ministry spokesman. “We advise the Amerikan side to have a look at how the tanker trucks not only drive through checkpoints at the Turkish border, but pass through them without even stopping.”

An unnamed FPSA Amerikan Gestapo Department of State division official confirmed on Friday that the Russian photos of thousands of oil tanker trucks in Syria were authentic [but] stressed that he hasn’t seen “the imagery of the border crossing with trucks crossing the border, and that’s because [the FPSA doesn’t] believe it exists.”

“The declarations of The Pentagon and the State Department seem like a theater of the absurd,” the MoD added, before noting that Washington should “watch the videos taken by its (own) drones which have recently been three times as numerous over the Turkey-Syria border and above the oil zones”. That, by the way, is an attempt to mock Washington for increasing the number of drones monitoring the situation while failing to actually conduct strikes. Earlier this week, Russia said that despite Washington’s claims, the FPSA and its partners are actually not bombing ISIS oil infrastructure or convoys.

In case the above isn’t clear enough, here’s more from the Russian MoD’s Facebook: “When (FPSA) officials say they don’t see how the terrorists’ oil is smuggled to Turkey… it smells badly of a desire to cover up these acts.”

We have on any number of occasions suggested that Washington has avoided striking ISIS oil convoys in an effort to ensure that the group retains the funding it needs to continue to destabilize Syria and the Assad government, and in order to preserve amicable relations with Ankara, which appears to benefit from the trafficking of illegal crude both from Kurdistan and Islamic State.

In other words, Russia once again turns the screws on the West in an effort to expose what at this point looks to be a coordinated effort to facilitate the funding of international terrorism via the establishment and maintenance of smuggling routes for some 50,000 b/d of oil looted from fields in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. If the FPSA is indeed complicit in this, it might be time to cut ties with Erdogan because Moscow is on the PR warpath and it’s just a matter of time before the smoking gun emerges.