Eclectic,
You may tell your RAF pilots that Tu-160s they were escorted recently over the Atlantic were just miracle, Russian propaganda and actually there was nothing in the air. Please share with us what they say back (if you ever knew one).
Things like number of ships or planes at a given region or location is somewhat easily verifiable.
69 planes and 6+4 ships are the numbers officially announced at e.g.
http://syria.mil.ru/news/more.htm?id=12066437@egNews