<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Russia deploys anti-aircraft missiles

They’re in Syria to protect warplanes, Russian official says

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
Published: November 5, 2015, 5:49pm

Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missiles in Syria to protect its warplanes carrying out airstrikes against militants, the head of the Russian air force disclosed Thursday.

The missiles were dispatched to territory under the control of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government to protect against “all possible threats,” Col. Gen. Viktor Bondarev said in an interview with the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“We sent there not only fighter jets, attack aircraft, bomber aircraft, helicopters but also missile systems, as various ‘force majeure’ circumstances may occur,” Bondarev said. “There can be different emergencies, such as hijacking a jet on the territory of a neighboring country or an attack on it. We should be ready for this,” he said.

“ISIS are a very mobile gathering of rabble,” Bondarev said of the Islamic State fighters that the Kremlin says it is targeting with its Syria intervention. “They use cars, motorbikes, bicycles and donkeys to move around and change their positions after every strike. You can’t effectively chase them with tanks, trucks and armored vehicles. Aviation is a different story.”

Retaliation by Islamist militants for Russia’s involvement in the multinational air campaign against Islamic State is one theory behind the midair breakup of a Russian charter jet. The Metrojet Airbus A321 exploded Saturday over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula about 20 minutes after taking off from the Sharm el-Sheikh tourist resort on the Red Sea en route to St. Petersburg.

Intelligence sources speaking anonymously reported in Washington and London that crash investigators examining the aircraft’s flight-data and cockpit voice recorders suspect the plane carrying 224 people was destroyed by a bomb.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the reports of boosted Russian forces in Syria.

Loading...