On November 24, 2015, at 10:24 AM, the war in Syria entered a dangerous new phase when a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M bomber aircraft near the Turkish border in the Hatay province of northern Syria.
In this desperate U.S.-backed attack on Russia and Syria, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member country had shot down a Russian military plane for the first time in nearly half a century.
U.S.-backed Syrian Turkmen militia shot and killed the pilot of the Su-24, 45-year-old Oleg Peshkov, as he parachuted from the burning aircraft.
A Russian Marine from the search-and-rescue team who was launched to retrieve the two airmen was also killed when the rescue helicopter was shot down by the rebels associated with the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army, who then blew up the helicopter with U.S.-made TOW missiles.
The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) released a statement expressing solidarity with the people of Russia and Syria. The Party stated:
“This dangerous, provocative assault, which included the serious war crime of the murder of one of the pilots as he was parachuting out of the flaming plane, exposes the reckless actions of a desperate U.S. imperialism that is the strategic enemy of the majority of the population of the Earth.”
The APSP further stated,
“This attack is one more example of the serious crisis of imperialism brought about by the resistance of oppressed peoples everywhere in our just struggle for national liberation and self-determination free from imperialist occupation, war and exploitation.”
Russia’s military presence in Syria is united with the Syrian government in their campaign to stem the U.S.-instigated chaos that has claimed the lives of 210,000 Syrian people in the past four years and caused the forced migration of millions more.
The events of November 24 prompted Russia to begin exposing the role of Turkey, a U.S. ally, in illegally purchasing oil from Islamic State-controlled territories.
Since 2011, the U.S. has funded, armed and trained proxy forces that they used to foment a brutal war on the people of Syria with the backing of U.S. lapdogs in Turkey, the illegitimate white settler state of Israel and the Gulf oil states.
While president Obama may give speeches about the scourge of the Islamic State, the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad who was democratically re-elected by a landslide vote in 2014, is still a high priority of the U.S. regime.
Assad is supported by Iran and the war on Syria is also part of the U.S. effort to weaken and undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran—a stable power in the region whose leadership and influence since the Iranian revolution in 1979 has challenged U.S. control over Middle Eastern resources.
Internal U.S. documents dating back to 2006 reveal the U.S. plans to foment Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict in Syria as a means to destabilize the Assad government and draw Iran into a military engagement.
Solidarity with the people of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia against U.S. imperialism, assaults by Turkey and all forms of neocolonial reaction!