Russia in warning to US over warplanes
WARPLANES FROM the US-led coalition operating over Syrian government-controlled areas west of the Euphrates River will be tracked as potential targets, Russia’s defence ministry said yesterday, a day after the US military shot down a Syrian air force jet.
Moscow condemned the downing of the jet after it dropped bombs near the US-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 US has shot down a Syrian jet – came as Iran fired several ballistic missiles at IS 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 IS before Syrian government forces captured most of them in recent months.
Moscow called on the US military to provide a full account of why it decided to shoot down the Syrian Su-22.
Russia, a key ally of Syrian president Bashar Assad, has been providing air cover to the government’s offensive since 2015.
But in April, Russia briefly suspended a hotline intended to prevent mid-air incidents with the US 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 US military confirmed that one of its F-18 Super Hornets shot down a Syrian Su-22 that had dropped bombs near the SDF.
Those forces, which are aligned with the US in the campaign against IS, 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 US 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 the Russian parliament, described the defence ministry’s statement as a warning.