Breaking this secret tops the Kremlin’s worries as far back as Lt. Gen. Valery Asapov’s demise in an ISIS assault outside Deir ez-Zour on Saturday, Sept 23, made him the most noteworthy positioning Russian officer to bite the dust in the Syrian war. Putin’s high stake in the puzzle is revealed in the most recent issue of DEBKA Weekly out on Friday, Sept. 29.

Russia’s best fighter Gen. Valery Gerasimov talked at the burial service Thursday of “a tricky shell” which cut off Asapov’s life, an indicate the doubt of treachery from inside the Russian-Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah camp of partners battling in Syria. A tip-off was assumed, on the grounds that the ISIS shelling was strangely exact, indicating learning of the general’s correct whereabouts.

Gerasimov uncovered out of the blue that Gen. Asimov was a year ago furtively backed to the Syrian armed force as authority of the Syrian Fifth Attack Troop Corps of volunteers.vThis corps was shaped in late 2016, and prepared and exhorted by the Russians. However, neither Damascus nor Moscow had unveiled that it was under Russian summon, or that it was being developed as a Russian rendition of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps – without Iran.