Russians will fight in Syria
Diplomacy fades, tensions rise as Moscow boosts aid.
“Volunteers” in Ukraine operation expected to help bolster Assad.
Russia signaled deepening intervention Monday in the Syria war, strongly hinting that its “volunteer” ground forces would soon be fighting there, as NATO officials warned the Kremlin after a Russian warplane invaded Turkey’s airspace.
Russia called the air incursion an innocent mistake because of foul weather, a claim that the Americans rejected.
The unfolding developments reflected a dangerous new superpower entanglement in the war, which has left a quarter-million people dead and half the country’s population displaced since it began more than four years ago.
The addition of Russia ground forces to the assaults already underway by Russian warplanes particularly threatens to undermine Turkey’s policy in Syria, which aims for the establishment of a “safe zone” along the Turkish border where some Syrian refugees could return in the future.
Russia and Iran have moved aggressively in the past few weeks to strengthen their ally, President Bashar Assad of Syria, to fight a range of insurgents. The assistance has raised the possibility of a new ground offensive by Assad’s forces against groups of fighters including those backed by the United States, Turkey and their allies, who want Assad to leave power.
Russia’s escalation has come as the Americans and Turks are intensifying their aerial attacks on the Islamic State extremist group, which has seized swaths of Syria and Iraq.
The Americans see the Islamic State as the most dangerous immediate threat. They view Russia’s moves as prolonging and possibly widening the war.
Russia’s intervention already appears to have subverted diplomatic efforts to halt the war led by a special U.N. envoy, Staffan de Mistura. Forty-one rebel factions who oppose Assad said in a statement on Monday that Russia’s “brutal occupation has cut the road to any political solution.”
Russia has openly acknowledged sending warplanes and other military equipment to bolster Assad. Although President Vladimir Putin has ruled out sending ground forces to Syria, a senior Kremlin defense official told Russian news agencies Monday that military veterans who had fought in eastern Ukraine would likely start showing up as “volunteer” ground forces in Syria.
The statement by the official, Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, head of the armed forces committee in Russia’s parliament, asserted that such volunteers “cannot be stopped.”
Komoyedov’s statement was the strongest signal yet of Russia’s intentions. It echoed Russia’s use of shadowy ground forces in oth- er conflicts over the past year — most notably its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March of 2014.
The Russian warplane’s incursion into Turkish airspace, which happened Saturday, elicited a blunt protest from Turkey, a NATO member. Turkish fighter jets intercepted the warplane.
The Russian military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said the Russian jet’s pilot had mistakenly entered Turkish airspace in bad weather.
A senior U.S. official rejected the claim. “The pilot would have known where they were,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to comment by name. “I’m not a fighter pilot, but there was no way this was accidental.”