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Those. assad is also a key source of revenue for putin as well in terms of a billion dollar arms trade. and that will be important to putin. so there are a number of different components to this. >> when you consider this action as far as president value melad putin and going before the tv cameras calling on these efforts, preemptive efforts as well, how do you take that? >> well, i think we -- i think putin's been telegraphing what his intent has been ever since we saw his actions in crimea. so i'm not surprised by what he's done here. what he's leveraging, what putin is leveraging is the fac...

Jihadists and his own stability. i think the other key aspect here is that putin has a russian naval facility which is just south of letika and just north of lebanon. that gives putin access to the sea lines of communication. that's really important for putin the a the moment. not just militarily because it gives him access to the middle east through the suez, but also economically because of the western sanctions, because of the price of oil dropping, putin's economy has been hurting over the past couple of years. so this gives him an economic option as well in terms of access to those sea li...

When it comes to the issue of russia telling the united states what it will or won't do, that's the tension point. you have two major superpowers, stakeholders in the region, trying to guide and counsel the other. that's not a good thing for russia and the united states, and there will obviously be tension. particularly since barack obama, from the united nations, essentially told putin to stop messing around inside syria. >> the struggle with the diplomatic aspect and approach of it as well. do you believe it's inevitable that ground troops will be sent by russia? >> i don't know if it's inev...

To the north of homs. but those air strikes have been targeted likely against al nu a nusra. that's the aqa affiliate. >> talk about that coming off the frosty talks between president obama and vladimir putin here with the u.n. general assembly and now this, how much of this -- as we've seen before -- is vladimir putin just flexing and saying this is my presence in the middle east and this is how i'm making it known? >> well, i think we shouldn't forget that putin has had a jihadist -- major jihadist problem on his doorstep for many years in the north region. jihadists killing children. i thin...

So this is the division that you see now. putin following up his moves at the security council -- rather at the united nations general assembly with security council action today. there will be no vote today. this will be discussed and debated over the coming month. but lavrov making a big play following up what putin did and basically the jets are flying, the bombs are falling and they're falling according to the best that we can understand, brian -- as you know, early reports are always hard to determine -- but the best that we can understand is that they are falling on rebel forces. one oth...