I see Col. Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis is discussing the same reporting. One reader, Willy B, posted this helpful information in the SST comment section:
The Olive Group, the mercenary firm that Konashenkov named, is under the umbrella of something called Constellis Holdings, which also owns Academi, the mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater, the company founded by Eric Prince. The CEO of Constellis is a man named Jason Deyonker, a University of Michigan classmate of Prince's and the man who bought out Blackwater, enabling Prince to move his operation to the UAE.
https://lobelog.com/trump-a...END UPDATE
From Sputnik, August 25, 2018:
According to the Russian Defense Ministry a group of militants is arriving in Syria's Idlib after being trained by a private British military company called Olive. The group was trained to work with poisonous substances.
"To carry out a chemical attack in the city of Jisr al-Shughur in the province of Idlib, militants from the Tahrir al-Sham group delivered 8 tankers with chlorine to a village a few kilometers from Jisr al-Shughur," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said. [...]Readers might want to go to the Sputnik site to read the report there because I did a drastic editing job on the report, which seems hastily translated from the Russian while a Sputnik editor labored to stuff the news about Olive under the headline "US, UK and France Prepare New Strike Against Syria - Russian MoD."
But don't look for anything more about Olive in the Sputnik report; I put all the sentences relating to it in the above paragraphs. I doubt the Russians would publicize anything more regarding what they've learned about Olive's activities without the risk of revealing "sources and methods," as they say in the Intel Community.
Yet I think it's obvious by now that no foreign government deeply involved in the Syrian War can as much sneeze in Syria without this being observed by a 'local source' and duly reported to the Russian MoD.
Would the British go so far, however, as to help HTS actually carry out a chemical weapons attack in the effort to frame Syria's government? I know nothing about Olive and so have no idea whether it's connected to the British government. But I certainly wouldn't put it past HTS, and to stage a really effective false-flag attack, they could need help from people skilled at working with chemical weapons. They might have told Olive that they didn't intend to stage a real attack, just make it look like the real thing.
In any case the Russians are alarmed because the Trump regime is overtly encouraging terrorist groups in Idlib to stage a chemical attack, whether real or phony; it's doing this by publicly stating that if any such attacks happen during the Syrian army's Idlib Offensive, the regime will attack the Syrian government even more forcefully than it's done before. And it's very clear from John Bolton's statements that the U.S. won't wait for an investigation of any chem weapons attack before launching missiles.
From the Sputnik report, Gen. Konashenkov is voicing the Russian MoD's speculation that U.S. deployments are being done for just such an attack:
"This provocation with the active participation of the British special services will serve as a pretext for the US, UK and France to conduct more missile strikes on the Syrian government and Syria's economic facilities.
[...]
The spokesman suggested that for this purpose, the destroyer USS "The Sullivans," armed with 56 cruise missiles, arrived in the Persian Gulf several days ago, while a US В-1В bomber carrying 24 air-to-surface AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles has been deployed at Al Udeid air base in Qatar.The deployments could have more to do with a reply to Tehran's saber-rattling than with Syria but the timing is ominous. The U.S. has been very clear in conveying that they and their coalition want to prevent the Idlib Offensive, which is imminent, from going forward.
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