Russia has launched its first airstrike in Syria, which some analysts feel is a mixed bag since its help in battling ISIS is welcome but so far it doesn’t appear to be going after ISIS but anti-Assad forces. CNN:
Russia has conducted its first airstrike against ISIS in Syria, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said Wednesday.
The airstrike targeted ISIS military equipment, communications centers, vehicles and ammunition, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said, as part of pinpoint strikes against ISIS ground targets.
The U.S. was given advance notice of the strike, American officials said.
It hit near the city of Homs, Syrian and American officials told CNN.
The Russians told the United States that it should not fly U.S. warplanes in Syria, but gave no geographical information about where Russia planned to strike, according to a senior U.S. official. But the State Department, which confirmed the advance warning, said U.S. missions were continuing as normal.
“A Russian official in Baghdad this morning informed U.S. Embassy personnel that Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria,” said John Kirby, using another acronym for ISIS. “He further requested that U.S. aircraft avoid Syrian airspace during these missions. We’ve seen media reporting that has suggested Russian missions have begun.”
Kirby said the U.S.-led coalition would continue to fly anti-ISIS missions over Iraq and Syria as planned.
But is Russia going after ISIS — or Assad’s foes? Sounds like it could be the latter:
President Vladimir Putin began air strikes to support his beleaguered Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad in Russia’s first use of force in the Middle East since the 1980s.
However, Russia’s airstrikes in Syria so far do not appear to be targeting Islamic State-held territory, a US official said on Wednesday, a crucial detail which could complicate any potential cooperation with the United States in the war.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Russia was carrying out the strikes in the vicinity of Homs and perhaps other areas in Syria as well, noting that all US information on Russian activity was still preliminary.
Russian warplanes began bombarding Syrian opposition targets in the war-torn nation’s north Wednesday, following a terse meeting at which a Russian general asked Pentagon officials to clear out of Syrian air space and was rebuffed, Fox News has learned.
A U.S. official said Russian airstrikes targeted fighters in the vicinity of Homs, located roughly 60 miles east of a Russian naval facility in Tartus, and were carried out by a “couple” of Russian bombers. The strikes hit targets in Homs and Hama, but there is no presence of ISIS in those areas, a senior U.S. defense official said. These planes are hitting areas where Free Syrian Army and other anti-Assad groups are located, the official said.
The development came after Pentagon officials, in a development first reported by Fox News, brushed aside an official request, or “demarche,” from Russia to clear air space over northern Syria, where Moscow said it intended to conduct airstrikes against ISIS on behalf of Assad, according to sources who spoke to Fox News. The request was made in a heated discussion between a Russian three-star general and U.S. officials at the American Embassy in Baghdad, sources said.
“If you have forces in the area we request they leave,” said the general, who used the word “please” in the contentious encounter.
Fox News quotes a senior Pentagon official who says the U.S. did not honor the request and conducted its own air strikes today.
Meanwhile, The Daily Beast notes the concern about if the air strikes are basically cover for other Putin intentions:
Russian aircraft began bombing targets in Syria on Tuesday, according to U.S. and Russian officials. Reports from eyewitnesses said that the jets were striking in areas in and around Homs, in western Syria, which notably is not an ISIS stronghold.
The strikes cast doubt on Russia’s earlier pledges, one as recently as a few days ago, that it intended to support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by attacking ISIS forces. U.S. officials had for the past several days been watching Russian surveillance flights over territory controlled by rebel groups fighting to overthrow Assad and wondered whether Russian President Vladimir Putin actually intended to target those forces.A senior administration official on Monday had assured reporters, “We have clarity on [Russia’s] objectives. Their objectives are to go after ISIL and to support the government.”
The Russians may have led U.S. officials to believe that in the hours before the airstrikes began. A Russian three-star general arrived in Baghdad at 9 a.m. local time and informed U.S. officials that Russian strikes would be starting imminently—and that the U.S. should refrain from conducting strikes and move any personnel out.
The russian official told U.S. personnel at the embassy in Baghdad that “Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria,” a senior administration official told The Daily Beast.
As U.S. officials scrambled to figure out what targets has been hit in the strikes, they conceded the operation was a rebuke of talks between President Obama and Putin on Monday when the two men reportedly agreed to “deconflict” any airstrikes, so that each side knew where the other’s aircraft were flying and what they might be targeting.
So the REAL question will be whether Russia is going after ISIS or using the ISIS problem as an excuse to clean out pockets of resistance to Assad.
So is Russia’s entry a plus — or a pretext?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.