Russia to track jets
U.S. warplanes over areas under Syrian gov’t control will be treated as potential targets
MOSCOW — Warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition operating over Syrian governmentcontrolled areas west of the Euphrates River will be tracked as potential targets, Russia’s Defence Ministry said Monday, a day after the U.S. military shot down a Syrian air force jet.
Moscow condemned the downing of the Syrian jet after it dropped bombs near the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces that are fighting Islamic State in Syria’s increasingly complicated civil war.
The downing of the warplane — the first time in the conflict that the U.S. has shot down a Syrian jet — came as Iran fired several ballistic missiles at Islamic State positions in eastern Syria in retaliation for two attacks by the extremists in Tehran earlier this month that killed 17 people.
Areas of northern Syria west of the Euphrates were controlled by Islamic State before Syrian government forces captured most of them in recent months. The Russians appear to want to avoid further U.S. targeting of Syrian warplanes or ground troops that have come under U.S. attack in eastern Syria recently.
Moscow also called on the U.S. military to provide a full accounting of why it decided to shoot down the Syrian Su-22.
Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been providing an air cover to the government’s offensive since 2015.
But in April, Russia briefly suspended a hotline intended to prevent midair incidents with the U.S. over Syria after the American military fired 59 missiles at a Syrian air base following a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on the Assad government.
The U.S. military confirmed that one of its F-18 Super Hornets shot down a Syrian Su-22 that had dropped bombs near the U.S. partner forces SDF. Those forces, which are aligned with the U.S. in the campaign against the Islamic State group, warned Syrian government troops to stop their attacks or face retaliation.
In comments to Russian news agencies, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov compared the downing to “helping the terrorists that the U.S. is fighting against.”
“What is this, if not an act of aggression?” he asked.
Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defence and security committee at the upper chamber of Russian parliament, described the Defence Ministry’s statement as a warning.
“I’m sure that because of this neither the U.S. nor anyone else will take any actions to threaten our aircraft,” he told the stateowned RIA Novosti news agency. “That’s why there’s no threat of direct confrontation between Russia and American aircraft.”
Ozerov insisted that Russia will be tracking the coalition’s jets, not shooting them down, but he added that “a threat for those jets may appear only if they take action that pose a threat to Russian aircraft.”
Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed opposition fighters said Assad’s forces have been attacking them in the northern province of Raqqa and warned that if such attacks continue, the fighters will take action.
SDF spokesman Talal Sillo said the government wants to thwart the SDF offensive to capture Raqqa. He said government forces began attacking SDF on Saturday, using warplanes, artillery and tanks in areas that SDF had liberated from Islamic State.
Sillo also warned that if “the regime continues in its offensive against our positions in Raqqa province, this will force us to retaliate with force.”