Thread: NATO confirms large Russian naval force dispatched off Syria

NATO confirms large Russian naval force dispatched off Syria: report

08/28/2018 8:42:53 AM
UPDATED ON 08/28/2018 8:43:08 AM
Written by i24NEWS

FILE: In this photo taken on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016, the Russian missile cruiser Varyag, with the Russian navy destroyer Vice Admiral Kulakov in the rear, on patrol in eastern Mediterranean. Russian warships equipped with an array of long-range missiles
(Vadim Savitsky/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

NATO confirmed on Tuesday that Russia has indeed dispatched a large naval force to the Mediterranean off Syria, following reports of an looming attack from Assad’s forces against rebels in the Idlib, Haaretz reported.

“The Russian Navy has dispatched substantial naval forces to the Mediterranean, including several ships equipped with modern cruise missiles,” NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu told Haaretz in a statement on Tuesday.

“Many NATO Allies border the Mediterranean, and our navies constantly operate there, so we monitor naval activity in the region, including that of Russia,” the statement added.

Pro-Kremlin paper Izvestia said on Tuesday that Russia currently has 10 warships and two submarines in Syrian waters, saying this amounted to Moscow's biggest military presence there since it became involved in the conflict in 2015.

Moscow has accused rebels of planning to stage a chemical attack in the northwestern province that would "provoke" Western strikes on its ally Damascus. It also accused British secret services of being "actively involved" in the plot.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov charged that the jihadist group Tahrir al-Sham "is close to committing a very serious provocation in Idlib using chemical weapons".

Syrian regime tightens noose on rebel-held Idlib
Graphics/AFP
On Monday Russian Major-General Igor Konashenkov state media as saying that USS Ross, a guided-missile destroyer, is now present in the Mediterranean and that it’s armed with 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

In April, the US, France and Britain launched joint missile strikes on Syrian targets in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma that left scores of people dead.

“We will not speculate on the intention of the Russian fleet, but it is important that all actors in the region exercise restraint and refrain from worsening an already disastrous humanitarian situation in Syria,” NATO spokesperson Lungescu told Haaretz.

“NATO is not present in Syria, but we support the efforts of the United Nations to achieve a lasting political resolution to the conflict,” she added.


Tension between US and Russia over Syria has increased since US President Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton said Washington will respond "very strongly" if Syrian regime forces used chemical weapons to retake Idlib.

-Biggest military drills since Cold War-

Russia will next month hold its biggest war games since at least the 1980's, with around 300,000 troops and 1,000 aircraft, the defense minister said Tuesday.

The Vostok-2018 exercises will be carried out from September 11 to 15 in the country's east with the participation of China and Mongolia.

"This will be something of a repeat of Zapad-81, but in some senses even bigger," Sergei Shoigu said of the 1981 war games in Eastern Europe, in comments reported by Russian news agencies.

He said "more than 1,000 aircraft, almost 300,000 troops and almost all the ranges of the Central and Eastern military districts" would be involved in the exercises.

"Imagine 36,000 pieces of military equipment moving together at the same time -- tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles. And all of this, of course, in conditions as close to combat as possible."

mitri Lovetsky)
A NATO spokesman Dylan White said that since Vostok-2018 takes place east of the Ural mountains, Moscow is not obliged to notify the West or invite observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, although an invitation has been extended to military attaches.
The announced drill "demonstrates Russia's focus on exercising large-scale conflict," he said in a comment.
Moscow said last year's Zapad-2017 military drills, conducted in ally Belarus and western regions of Russia, saw the participation of roughly 12,700 troops.

But NATO claimed Russia could have been massively under reporting the scale of the exercises, which some of the alliance's eastern members said involved more than 100,000 servicemen

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/inter...f-syria-report

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