Russia warns US after Syrian fighter jet shot down
RUSSIA yesterday warned it would track US-led coalition aircraft in central Syria as “targets” and halted an incidentprevention hotline with Washington after US forces downed a Syrian jet.
Moscow has only once before suspended the hotline, which was established in October 2015 to prevent conflict between the different forces operating in Syrian airspace.
The shootdown incident and Russia’s response further complicate Syria’s conflict and come as the US-led coalition and allied fighters battle to oust Islamic State from its Syrian bastion Raqqa.
Analysts say neither Washington nor President Bashar al-Assad’s regime appear to be seeking further confrontation, but warn that the risks are high in Syria’s crowded battlefields.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Washington of failing to use the hotline before downing the plane near Raqqa, and called for a “careful investigation by the US command” into the incident.
“Any flying objects, including planes and drones of the international coalition, discovered west of the Euphrates river will be tracked as aerial targets by Russia’s air defences on and above ground,” it warned.
The Syrian jet was shot down on Sunday evening after regime forces engaged fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance battling with US support against IS, in an area close to Raqqa.
The American F/A-18E Super Hornet shot down the Syrian SU-22 around 7 pm as it “dropped bombs near SDF fighters” south of the town of Tabqa, the coalition said in a statement.
It said that several hours earlier, regime forces had attacked the SDF in another town near Tabqa, wounding several and driving the SDF from the town. The coalition said the Syrian warplane had been shot down “in accordance with rules of engagement and in collective self-defence of Coalition partnered forces”.
Syria’s army disputed the account, saying its plane was hit while “conducting a mission against the terrorist Islamic State group”.
It warned of “the grave consequences of this flagrant aggression”.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called it a “continuation of America’s line to disregard the norms of international law”, adding: “What is this if not an act of aggression?”
The incident was the latest skirmish between the US-led coalition and regime forces in the increasingly tense and crowded space in Syria’s north and east. The coalition has for months backed SDF forces in their bid to capture Raqqa, an operation in which the regime has not been involved.
The SDF entered Raqqa for the first time earlier this month and now holds four neighbourhoods in the east and west of the city.
Damascus has instead turned its focus further east, to the largely IS-held oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor, where government forces are besieged in part of the provincial capital.
It is advancing towards the region on three fronts, south of Raqqa, through the Badia desert region in central Syria, and along Syria’s eastern border.
But the advances have created conflict with the US-led coalition, particularly along the Syrian border, where US and other foreign forces are training an anti-IS force at the Tanf garrison.
In recent weeks, the coalition has fired on pro-regime ground forces approaching the garrison and shot down a proregime armed drone.
The coalition describes these incidents as “force protection” measures and says its primary focus remains targeting IS.
Sam Heller, a Syria expert at The Century Foundation think tank, said the regime was provoking confrontations, but neither side appeared to want a major escalation.
“I think that it was just that the regime engaged in a provocation and then a lower-rung US commander responded in self-defence,” he said of Sunday’s incident.
“The regime got too close and it got burned.”
He said the provocations by Syria’s government and its allies were a potentially risky strategy.
“It doesn’t look like anyone currently intends to deliberately escalate further, but when you’ve got these little skirmishes . . . the risk is that you can end up in an escalation by accident.”