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.”