World
Russia and Syria bomb Syrian Islamist rebels after surprise incursion
JERUSALEM – A radical Islamist group unleashed its biggest military incursion against Syrian regime forces since 2020 in the northwest of the war-ravaged Syrian Arab Republic, triggering Russian and Syrian warplanes on Thursday to bomb the insurgent offensive.
Rebels led by the U.S-designated Islamist terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stormed a dozen towns and villages in northwest Aleppo province, which is controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
The Syrian Islamist offensive started on the same day that Assad’s ally, the Lebanese-based terrorist organization, Hezbollah, reached a ceasefire agreement with Israel to end over 14 months of warfare.
The battle unfolding in Syria involves a motley crew of U.S.-classified state-sponsors of terrorism — Assad’s regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran — against a Turkey-backed Islamist terrorist movement. Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime has faced accusations of war crimes during its invasion of Ukraine.
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Smoke rises amid fighting between opposition factions and Syrian government troops in Majdaliya, Idlib countryside, Syria, on Thursday. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Former U.S. defense intel officer Rebekah Koffler, who is an expert on Putin, told Fox News Digital, “This is classic Putin’s Playbook, what’s going on in Syria, on Thanksgiving Day. He is doing what’s called lateral escalation in Syria, in response to Biden’s giving authorization to [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky to use U.S. ATACMs to strike deep into Russia, and Zelensky taking Biden up on his offer. Russia and the United States are on the opposite sides of the war in Syria. So Putin is ratcheting up support of Assad, which is counter to U.S. policy, signaling to Biden that he will be countering U.S. interests across multiple geographic areas.”
Anti-regime groups take control of some villages in the western countryside as the clashes between the Bashar al-Assad regime and the opposition armed group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) continued in Aleppo, Syria on Wednesday. (Kasim Rammah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Koffler added, “Putin is signaling pressure on Biden to withdraw authorization from Zelensky to use ATACMs against Russia. The doctrine is ‘escalate to de-escalate.’ With the recent strike of hypersonic missile Oreshnik on Ukraine, Putin climbed several rungs on the escalation ladder. With Russian air forces joining Syrian airfare bombing rebel-held northwestern Syria, he is also moving laterally on the escalation ladder, to out escalate the United States, unbalance Biden, and create as much negotiating leverage on Ukraine for himself before President Trump begins his second term. I would not be surprised if Assad strikes the rebel-held territories with chemical weapons again.”
Alex Grinberg, an Israeli expert on Russia, told Fox News Digital that the rest of Assad’s army cannot fight against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham without Russian air power.
He said this is “usually what the Russians do” in Syria.
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Iranian regime-controlled state media said that Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Kioumars Pourhashemi was killed in Aleppo during the incursion. Pourhashemi was a senior IRGC military adviser in Syria.
Anti-regime groups took control of some villages in the western countryside as the clashes between the Bashar al-Assad regime and the opposition armed group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) continued in Aleppo, Syria on Wednesday. (Kasim Rammah/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Islamist rebels say the campaign was in response to stepped-up strikes in recent weeks against civilians by the Russian and Syrian air forces on areas in southern Idlib, and to preempt any attacks by the Syrian army, which they said was building up troops near front lines with rebels.
Assad’s war against his population, which started with Syrians calling for democracy in 2011, has resulted in the murders of over 500,000 people.
Iran has sent thousands of fighters to Syria during the Syrian war. While these have included members of the Guards, officially serving as advisers, the bulk have been Shi’ite militiamen from all over the region.
Turkish security sources said on Thursday the rebels initially launched a limited operation after attacks by Syrian government forces, and expanded the operation after government forces abandoned their positions.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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June 11, 2026
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U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey resigned Thursday after clashing with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government over military spending, dealing the British leader a setback weeks before a critical NATO summit to include President Donald Trump.
Healey’s departure stemmed from a dispute over the delayed Defense Investment Plan (DIP) — the government’s long-promised roadmap for military investment and readiness — and as NATO allies face renewed pressure from Trump to boost defense spending.
“John Healey’s resignation is a seismic moment for the government and the Ministry of Defense,” Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Senior Associate Fellow Ed Arnold told Fox News Digital.
“For the government, it creates a sequence of political headaches in terms of a replacement, and trying to get the Defense Investment Plan published.”
BRITISH PM KEIR STARMER MOVES UK MILITARY INTO ‘WAR-FIGHTING READINESS’
Britain’s Defence Secretary John Healey speaks with British and Norwegian naval personnel at the unveiling of the Atlantic Bastion programme in Portsmouth, Britain, on Dec. 4, 2025. (Peter Nicholls/Pool via Reuters)
Healey had been in intense, late-stage negotiations with Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves over the scale and timelines of the DIP.
Starmer reportedly refused to set out a timeline to reach 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense by 2035 — a promise he made to Trump at last year’s NATO summit — and would not commit to a firm date for reaching 3%.
Instead, Starmer offered Healey a deal to spend 2.68% of GDP on defense by 2030, up only marginally from 2.6% next year, Reuters reported.
“You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country,” Healey wrote to Starmer in his resignation letter, warning that the financial constraints would “make the country less safe,” the outlet reported.
NATO CHIEF URGES MEMBERS TO ‘TURBOCHARGE’ DEFENSE PRODUCTION AS HE PAINTS PICTURE OF A WORLD BOUND FOR WAR
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, U.S. President Donald Trump and Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer pose with NATO country leaders during the NATO Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. (Ben Stansall/Pool via Reuters)
“If the delay to the Defense Investment Plan was already undermining the government’s credibility on defense, John Healey’s resignation has blown a hole in its side,” Professor Kevin Rowlands of the RUSI defense and security think tank told Fox News Digital.
“The immediate consequence is not just political embarrassment for No. 10, but a significant loss of planning certainty at a time when the British Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defense, and industry really need clarity on what will be funded, and when,” he added.
The political fallout is expected to reverberate across the Atlantic, where Washington has increased pressure on European allies to fulfill their defense obligations. Trump has frequently criticized NATO alliance members as “free riders.”
On June 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the upcoming Ankara summit would be the “most important meeting” in NATO’s history because there are some things “that need to be cleared up and fixed.”
He added, “The United States is still in the NATO alliance, and we’ll be there.”
TRUMP EFFECT FORCES GERMANY TO REPRIORITIZE DEFENSE AS NATION PLAYS CATCH-UP IN MILITARY SPENDING
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer increased the military presence in Cyprus following an Iranian drone strike early Monday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Kin Cheung / POOL / AFP via Getty Images))
However, U.S. officials have made it clear that patience is wearing thin.
“Ahead of next month’s NATO summit, POTUS has been clear: Allies must fulfil their commitment to spending 5% of GDP on defense,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker posted on X this week.
Furthermore, a U.S. official noted that a U.K. funding package far lower than 18 billion pounds ($23 billion) would send a highly “negative” signal to Trump ahead of the Ankara meeting, according to The Times.
Starmer has pledged to lift spending to 3% in the next Parliament but Healey’s exit has exposed that the current strategy leaves the U.K. lagging behind key allies. By comparison, Germany plans to spend 3.7% of its GDP on defense by 2030.
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“Healey knows the threats we face, he knows the capabilities and shortfalls the armed forces have, and if he believes that the financial settlement is not enough to keep the country safe — to the extent that he cannot honorably stay in post — then we are in trouble,” Rowlands added.
“While the impact will mainly be felt on Whitehall, the international implications are severe with a NATO summit just three weeks away,” Arnold noted.
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After two years of strong performance driven by a shift to a war economy, Russia’s economic situation is weakening, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told Euronews.
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And although the IMF raised its forecast for Russia’s 2026 growth in its April outlook from 0.8% to 1.1%, Georgieva told Euronews this did not reflect the full picture of the economic weakening.
“The higher oil prices do give a breather to Russia,” Georgieva said, arguing the hike cannot offset the bigger hit to Russia’s economy.
“They have depleted their buffers dramatically,” Georgieva said. The oil price windfall “appears to be used to rebuild buffers rather than to inject more investment into the economy,” she explained.
“Growth has slowed down significantly. Now we are projecting 1%. Before the war, their potential growth was 1.6%,” Georgieva pointed out.
The IMF managing director also told Euronews that it is important to consider other economic indicators to better understand Russia’s current economic situation.
“Inflation is high. That means that interest rates are high, almost 15%.”
The IMF does not expect to see “material impact on growth in Russia,” Georgieva said. “It is a country whose medium (and) long-term prospects have worsened significantly.”
She listed three grounds on which the prospects have worsened. The first is losing people.
“A country that was in a demographic decline to begin with now lost so many young people for a terrible reason,” Georgieva explained.
The second factor is the sanctions, specifically the way they “bite a lot on the technology front.”
“What we see in the oil and gas sector in Russia, there is a tremendous problem with lack of technological renewal that is restricting the ability of the sector to expand,” she said.
And the third is the fact that “Russia lost standing.”
“That translates into many tangible and non-tangible losses. I mean, just think of the young Russians that could have built relations with Europeans and others and did not because of the war,” Georgieva stated.
“So, on the whole, Russia is coming crippled,” she concluded.
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