The threat of direct Russian-American confrontation in Syria escalated on Monday after Moscow said it will treat any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river as a potential target.
Russia said it was responding to US planes shooting down a Syrian air force jet on Sunday. The US said its planes had acted to defend US-backed forces seeking to capture the Islamic State capital of Raqqa in north-east Syria.
It was the first such US attack on a Syrian air force plane since the start of the country’s civil war six years ago.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said the US strike “has to be seen as a continuation of America’s line to disregard the norms of international law.
“What is this if not an act of aggression? It is, if you like, help to those terrorists that the US is fighting against, declaring they are carrying out an anti-terrorism policy.”
The Russian ministry also said it would respond to the attack by suspending its communications channel with Washington, which is designed to prevent collisions and dangerous incidents in Syrian airspace.
The prime minister, Theresa May, intervened on Monday, urging Russia not to end the “deconfliction arrangements” since it increases the risk of an air fight breaking out inadvertently between Russian warplanes and US-led coalition warplanes.
Responding to Russian announcements, Marine Corps general Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US would “work diplomatically and military in the coming hours to reestablish deconfliction”.
The growing risk of a direct confrontation between the US and Russia follows a decision by US president Donald Trump to grant his military chiefs untrammeled control of the US military strategy in Syria.
But the Pentagon insisted it was not seeking to escalate the conflict and had acted only after the Syrian jet in question had dropped bombs near US partner forces involved in the fight to wrest Raqqa from Isis control.
Russia stressed it will in future be tracking the coalition’s jets, not shooting them down, but added that “a threat for those jets may appear only if they take action that pose a threat to Russian aircraft”. Moscow’s foreign ministry said in a statement: “All kinds of airborne vehicles, including aircraft and UAVs of the international coalition detected to the west of the Euphrates river will be tracked by the Russian SAM systems as air targets.”
Growing tensions between Washington and Moscow over efforts to dislodge Isis from its Raqqa stronghold are a long way from Trump’s original plan to work with Russia in Syria to defeat the terror group.
Russia, a staunch supporter of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, had been pressing the US to make the removal of Isis a joint land and air operation, but discussions over Syria’s long-term political future appear to have ground to a halt, leaving the US military to operate in a political vacuum.
Source: TheGuardian UK
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