Russia has presented photos of oil delivery convoys at Syria-Turkey border. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he’ll resign if Moscow can prove the Turkish participation in ISIS oil trade. Here it’s.
© Sputnik/ Alexander Vilf
The general staff has irrefutable evidence on Turkey’s involvement in the oil trade, Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces said.
“We have identified three main oil routes,” Rudskoy said.
3 main oil routes
- The western route leads to the Turkish ports in the Mediterranean
- The northern — to Patma oil refinery
- The eastern — to Dzhazri transfer point
The routes of alleged oil smuggling from Syria and Iraq to Turkey © syria.mil.ru
The town of Dier ez-Zor is one of the largest centers of oil extraction. The delivery route runs from Eastern Syria to the Batman refinery in Turkey. The size of the illegal oil trade is impressive.
Heavy vehicles are crossing Syrian-Turkish border with no restrictions near Reyhanli^:
Russia cannot comprehend that such a large-scale business as oil smuggling could not have been noticed by the Turkish authorities. Russia concludes that the Turkish leadership is directly involved in the smuggling.
On Nov. 16, 260 tankers trucks were spotted near the Turkish border. Some of them tried to mask themselves as trailers.
“Space recoinassance established that after crossing the border tanker trucks moves further into Turkey,” Rudsloy said. Then oil was delivered to other countries.
“We presented evidence how the illegal oil trade is carried out to finance the terrorist groups,” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said. “We know how much Erdogan’s words are worth.”
Every day an oil tanker in Turkey is loaded with Syria oil smuggled out by terrorist groups
Turkey is the main buyer of smuggled oil coming from Iraq and Syria, Antonov added.
“According to our data, the top political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – is involved in this criminal business.”
Since the start of the Russia’s military operations in Syria on September 30, the income of ISIS from illegal oil smuggling has been significantly reduced.
“The income of this terrorist organization was about $3 million per day. After two months of Russian airstrikes their income was about $1.5 million a day,” Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudskoy said.
Tankers trucks near the Turkish border © syria.mil.ru
The US-led coalition is not bombing ISI oil trucks, Rudskoy noted.
On Monday, Nov.30, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow has evidence that the Russian Su-24 was shot down by Turkish F16s on the Syrian border to protect oil deliveries from ISIS to Turkey. The oil from ISIS-controlled fields is exported to Turkey on an industrial scale. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan denied the allegations and said that if evidence does surface, he will resign from the presidency.
Videos of Russian airstrikes on an oil storage facilities controlled by ISIS:
Oil storage near Maarrat al-Numan, Dec. 2
Oil storage near al-Sawra, Dec. 2
They have a Batman refinery? What a bunch of Turkeys.