Three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation in Syria said on Wednesday that Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in support of government troops.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what U.S. officials say appears to be a new military build-up by Moscow, one of President Bashar al-Assad’s main allies, though one of the sources said the numbers of Russians involved so far were small.
Two U.S. officials said Russia has sent two tank landing ships and additional aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and has deployed a small number of naval infantry forces.
The U.S. officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia’s military moves in Syria remained unclear. One of the officials said initial indications suggested the focus was on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, an Assad stronghold.
The move comes at a time when forces of Mr. Assad’s government have faced major setbacks on the battlefield in a four-year-old multi-sided civil war that has killed 2,50,000 people and driven half of Syria’s 23 million people from their homes.
Syrian troops pulled out of a major air base on Wednesday, and a monitoring group said this meant government soldiers were no longer present at all in Idlib province, most of which slipped from government control earlier this year. Moscow confirmed it had “experts” on the ground.
But Russia has declined to comment on the exact scale and scope of its military presence in Syria. Damascus denied Russians were involved in combat, but a Syrian official said the presence of experts had increased in the past year. Officials in the U.S., which is fighting an air war against the Islamist militant group Islamic State in Syria and also opposes Mr. Assad’s government, have said in recent days that they suspect Russia is reinforcing to aid Mr. Assad.
Washington has put pressure on countries nearby to deny their air space to Russian flights, a move Moscow denounced on Wednesday as “international boorishness”. Moscow’s only naval base in the Mediterranean is at Tartous on the Syrian coast in territory held by Mr. Assad, and keeping it secure would be an important strategic objective for the Kremlin.
Two of the Lebanese sources said the Russians were establishing two bases in Syria, one near the coast and one further inland which would be an operations base. “The Russians are no longer just advisors,” one of them said. “The Russians have decided to join the war against terrorism.”
Another of the Lebanese sources said that so far any Russian combat role was still small: “They have started in small numbers, but the bigger force did not yet take part ... There are numbers of Russians taking part in Syria but they did not yet join the fight against terrorism strongly.”
The Syrian official said: “Russian experts are always present but in the last year they have been present to a greater degree.” — Reuters
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