The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday accused the Obama administration of fighting the Islamic State “in word only.”
The charge came in response to the Pentagon’s refusal to share information on Islamic State targets until Russia changes its policy towards Syrian President Bashar Assad. “We are not going to cooperate with Russia on Syria until they change their strategy of supporting Assad and instead focus on ISIL,” Pentagon spokesman Michelle Baldanza said.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov responded in comments to reporters on Monday. “The hackneyed thesis has once again confirmed that the Pentagon will fight against IS in word only, instead of taking real action,” Konashenkov said, according to the TASS Russian News Agency.
“The statement by the US Defense Department spokesperson Michelle Baldanza about the [US side’s] refusal from any cooperation in the fight against Islamic State is a broken record, and it’s high time to change it,” he added.
The rhetoric is an escalation stemming from allegations made by Russia that the Islamic State has been smuggling oil from Iraq into Turkey on a massive scale. Russian General Sergey Rudskoy told journalists on Dec. 25 that the country’s intelligence services found approximately 12,000 delivery trucks on the Turkish-Iraqi border, near the Iraqi city of Zakho.
“As of the time the imagery was shot, there were 11,775 tank and delivery trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border in the vicinity of Zakho, with 4,530 of them in Turkey and 7,250 in Iraq,” Rudskoy said.
However, the Obama administration has stood by Turkey.
“We reject outright the premise that the Turkish government is in league with ISIL to smuggle oil across its borders,” State Department spokesman Mike Toner told reporters in a Dec. 2 briefing. “We frankly see no evidence, none, to support such an accusation.”
Russia claims to have taken out 2,000 tankers operated by the Islamic State since beginning airstrikes on Sept. 30, in addition to several dozen oil wells and refineries.
