Russian forces stationed at the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia governorate held a ceremony on Friday (February 5) to unveil a bust of Russian pilot, Roman Filippov, who the Russian government posthumously awarded the title of ‘Hero of Russia’ after his death in Syria.

The commander of the Russian Forces Group in Syria, Major General Alexander Chaiko, claimed at the statue's inauguration ceremony that Major Filippov had “devoted his whole life to the defence of our homeland, performed his military duty and spent his life fighting against terrorists.”

Russian forces have reportedly begun searching for the remains of two more Israeli soldiers, missing since 1982, in a cemetery near the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

The two soldiers, identified as Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, have been missing since 1982 during the ‘Battle of Sultan Yaqoub’ in the First Lebanese War, along with another Israeli soldier, Zachary Baumel, whose remains were recovered and returned to Israel in 2019, according to a report by the Times of Israel newspaper.

A Belarusian veterans group claims that the Belarusian Armed Forces (BAF) are preparing to deploy two battalions of so-called “peacekeepers” to Syria in September 2021.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Monday that Russia's foreign partners in military and technical cooperation are paying increasing attention to Russian-made military products tested during Russia’s military operations on Syrian territory.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin stated that "there is an interest for many countries in obtaining Russian military equipment, which confirms its high reliability and effectiveness in real combat operations," according to what was quoted by the Russian media outlet ‘RT’.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has claimed that Qassem Soleimani, the late head of Iran’s Quds Force, was responsible for convincing Russia to intervene militarily in Syria.

Photo: A scene from Idlib following Russia's and Assad's 'weapons tests'

Article from 'Syrian TV' news site. Original (in Arabic) below

A senior Russian military official has announced that Russian forces have successfully used Kalashnikov drones in Syria, the latest of a long series of weapons to be ‘tested’ in Syria by Moscow mostly against Syrian civilians, as documented by local and international human rights networks.

Syrian tycoon and former senior Assad regime official Firas Tlass has reported claims from regime insiders of tensions between Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asmaa, which the insiders say are difficult to “patch up.”

Tlass, the son of former Assad regime defence minister Mustafa Tlass, who now lives in exile in Europe, asked in a post on Facebook: “Will the Russians intervene to control things? I don’t know".

Following the expulsion of ISIS from the city of Albu Kamal in Deir Ezzor governorate, the town on the Syrian-Iraq border has seen a growing presence of Iranian militias, who have imposed their full control there due to its vital geographical location on the road used by Iran’s forces in travelling to and from Syria via Iraq.

For the past few months, Russia has been trying to expand its regional sphere of influence in the Syrian-Iraqi border area at the expense of the Iranian militias, in line with Russia's plan to extend its control over strategic areas in Syria.

Prosecutors in Belarus are reportedly considering whether to bring terrorism charges against several protesters for crimes allegedly committed during the recent demonstrations against the country's Kremlin-backed dictator Alexander Lukashenko.

During an appearance on the state-owned Belarus 1 channel on Wednesday, Belarusian Prosecutor General Andrey Shved said, "There is a war going on, which over the past few weeks, has taken on radical forms - extremely radical."