Drones used in attacks on Russian base

SYRIA: A series of mysterious attacks against the main Russian military base in Syria, including one conducted by a swarm of armed miniature drones, has exposed Russia’s continued vulnerability in the country despite recent claims of victory by President Vladimir Putin.

In the most recent and unusual of the attacks, 13 armed drones descended from an unknown location on Sunday on to Russia’s vast Khmeimim air base in northwestern Latakia province, the headquarters of Russia’s military operations in Syria.

Russia said it shot down some of the drones and used electronic countermeasures to safely bring down the others, and no serious damage was caused.

The attack came less than a week after two Russian servicemen were killed in a mortar assault on the same base.

The Russian Defence Ministry denied a report that seven warplanes were put out of action in the mortar attack.

Taken together, the drone and mortar attacks appear to represent the most concerted assault on the Russian headquarters in Syria since the military intervention in September 2015.

There was a smaller drone attack on Russia’s long-standing naval base at the Mediterranean port of Tartus at the same time as the Khmeimim attack, the defence ministry said. A smaller mortar attack against Khmeimim was reported by Syrian media on December 27.

The Khmeimim base, the heart of Russia’s military operations in Syria, is deep in Syrian government-held territory. Until now, it had seemed immune to attack, said Maxim Suchkov of the Russian International Affairs

Council.

In December, Putin visited the Khmeimim base and said Russia would start to wind its presence down because the war in Syria was essentially over.

What makes the attacks especially unusual is that there has been no claim of responsibility, triggering a frenzy of speculation in the Russian and Syrian news media over who may have carried them out.

Russia’s Defence Ministry yesterday appeared to accuse the United States of supplying the technology for the drone attack, saying the assault required a higher level of expertise than any armed group in Syria was known to possess. It said a US Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was in the skies above the area for four hours during the attack.

Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said the allegation was ‘‘absolutely false’’.

One of the myriad Syrian opposition groups was the most probable suspect, Suchkov said. But none of the rebel groups is known to be within mortar range of the base, and they typically claim responsibility for all their operations.

Among the theories circulating widely is that disgruntled Alawites from Assad’s own minority sect were responsible.

A statement about the attacks on the base, which is in a predominantly Alawite area, was posted online in the name of a shadowy group called the Free Alawite Movement.

Another claim is that an Iranian-backed militia fighting on behalf of the regime and located in the government-controlled hills nearby was responsible.