Daily Archives: October 9, 2015

Nato is ready to send troops to Turkey to defend against threats on its southern flank, the head of the alliance has said following violations of Turkish airspace by Russian jets conducting airstrikes in Syria.

Moscows growing military involvement in the Syria conflict which on Wednesday involved its jets backing an offensive by ground troops loyal to the president, Bashar al-Assad is expected to be high on the agenda of a meeting of the alliances defence ministers.

Nato is ready and able to defend all allies, including Turkey against any threats, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general, told reporters before the Brussels meeting on Thursday.

Related: Britain to station troops in Baltic region 'to deter Russian aggression'

In Syria, we have seen a troubling escalation of Russian military activities. We will assess the latest developments and their implications for the security of the alliance. This is particularly relevant in view of the recent violations of Natos airspace by Russian aircraft.

Nato has already responded by increasing our capacity, our ability, our preparedness to deploy forces including to the south, including in Turkey.

The ground offensive backed by Russian airstrikes was an escalation in Moscows week-long campaign, which had previously been restricted to bombing runs to soften up rebel positions near major loyalist strongholds.

Syrias chief-of-staff, Gen Ali Ayoub, on Thursday declared that a wide-ranging ground offensive by Syrian troops was under way that he said had been facilitated by Russian airstrikes.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ground forces loyal to the government targeted insurgents in the Ghab plain, with heavy barrages of surface-to-surface missiles as Russian warplanes bombed from above. It also said rebels had shot down a helicopter in Hama province in western Syria. It was unclear if it was Syrian or Russian.

The Ghab plain lies next to a mountain range that forms the heartland of Assads Alawite sect. Recapturing it from an alliance of rebel groups that includes al-Nusra Front, al-Qaidas wing in Syria, would help secure Assads coastal heartlands and could provide a platform to drive the rebels back from other areas.

Most of Wednesdays fighting appeared to be concentrated in Hama, a central province with a majority Sunni capital that has remained in the hands of the regime since the start of the war. It is key to Assads strategy of cementing control over major population centres in a strip of territory from Latakia, in the north, through to Homs, Hama and Damascus.

Russias air campaign in Syria has caught the US and its allies on the back foot and alarmed Syrias northern neighbour Turkey, which says its airspace has been repeatedly violated by Russian jets.

On Thursday, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the Turkish president, warned Russia that its military action in Syria is endangering trade ties. Erdoan said Ankara could look elsewhere for gas supplies and cancel the construction of its first nuclear power plant, which is being built by Russia. Russia supplies 60% of Turkeys gas needs.

On Wednesday, Turkey summoned Russias ambassador for the third time in four days over the reported airspace violations, which Nato has said appeared to be deliberate and were extremely dangerous.

Turkey said Syria-based missile systems harassed its warplanes on Tuesday while eight F-16 jets were on a patrol flight along the Syrian border. The Russian ministry of defence said it was continuing to consult with Turkey to ensure there would be no repetition of the incident.

On Wednesday Russian warships fired missiles into Syria from the Caspian Sea for the first time. The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said four warships launched 26 rockets at Isis targets.

The Syrian push on the ground is the first time Assads forces have coordinated with the Russian airforce in an attempt to seize lost territory from opposition forces, leading to some of the fiercest fighting in months in a civil war that has now lasted four and a half years and killed more than 250,000 people.

The assault mirrors the US strategy in northern Syria, where coalition planes bombed Isis positions to pave the way for their allies on the ground to advance against the militants. It also poses the question of how much territory the regimes army, exhausted and depleted by the conflict, can seize from the rebels.

The US Department of State repeated accusations that a large majority of Russias military strikes in Syria have not been aimed at Isis or jihadis tied to al-Qaida, and have instead targeted the moderate Syrian opposition.

Greater than 90% of the strikes that weve seen them take to date have not been against Isil [Isis] or al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists, said a spokesman, John Kirby.

Speaking in Brussels, the US ambassador to Nato, Douglas Lute, said on Wednesday that Russias buildup in Syria now included a considerable and growing naval presence, long-range rockets and a battalion of ground troops backed by Moscows most modern tanks.

He said the Kremlin seemed to be intent on forging a new counter-coalition to the western-Gulf axis, bringing together the Russians, Iranians, Iraqis and Hezbollah behind Assad.

Moscow had managed a quite impressive military deployment over the past week to its Syrian naval base in Tartus and its army base in Latakia, Lute said.

There is a considerable and growing Russian naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, more than 10 ships now, which is a bit out of the ordinary, he told a news briefing.

The recent Russian reinforcements over the last week or so feature a battalion-size ground force There is artillery, there are long-range rocket capabilities, there are air defence capabilities, Lute said. A battalion is typically made up of about 1,000 soldiers.

A senior Turkish official said 18 Russian warships had passed through the Bosphorus strait at Istanbul en route to Moscows Syrian base, amid conflicting reports of Russian ground forces also being deployed.

Nato diplomats doubted the Russians were preparing any ground operations but were sure that they were training and equipping Assad ground forces and were active on the ground beyond their military bases.

The Iranians are on the ground, but not the Russians yet, said the Turkish official.

The Turkish official and Nato diplomats said the Russians had also deployed air-to-air fighter aircraft, which would not be used for bombing anti-Assad forces, but would engage in dogfights.

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BRUSSELS NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said alliance defense ministers on Thursday will consider the implications for NATO's own security of the "troubling escalation of Russian military activities" in Syria.

He said NATO is ready to deploy forces, if needed, to defend alliance member Turkey.

On Wednesday, Russian warships fired cruise missiles in the first combined air-and-ground assault with Syrian government troops since Moscow began its military campaign in the country last week.

Over the weekend, Turkey reported back-to-back violations of its airspace by Russian warplanes.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and his counterparts from the 27 other NATO nations had already been scheduled to meet Thursday in Brussels.

Stoltenberg told reporters the meeting will receive an update from its military commanders on the situation in Syria, as well as Afghanistan.

"In Syria, we have seen a troubling escalation of Russian military activities," Stoltenberg said. "We will assess the latest developments and their implications for the security of the alliance. This is particularly relevant in view of the recent violations of NATO's airspace by Russian aircraft."

NATO on Monday issued a statement demanding that the violations cease. Russia called its penetration of Turkish airspace a minor incident that was unintentional. Stoltenberg had already brushed off the Russian explanation.

"NATO is able and ready to defend all allies, including Turkey, against any threat," the secretary-general said Thursday. He said NATO had already increased "our capacity, our ability, our preparedness to deploy forces, including to the south, including in Turkey, if needed."

"We are constantly assessing the situation also with the Turkish government," Stoltenberg said, adding that he would be meeting later Thursday with Turkish Defense Minister Mehmet Vecdi Gonul.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon accused Russia of acting chiefly in Syria not to attack the Islamic State terrorist organization but to shore up the beleaguered government of President Bashar al-Assad, thus making a serious situation "much more dangerous." NATO officials have expressed fears there could be an encounter, accidental or otherwise, between Russian planes and air forces of the U.S.-led coalition attacking Islamic State in Syria.

"We'll be meeting today to see what we can do to de-escalate this crisis particularly in terms of air safety," Fallon said as he arrived at NATO headquarters. "We'll be calling on Russia specifically to stop propping up the Assad regime, to use their own (air) crews constructively to stop Assad bombing his own civilians."

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Russia must recognize that if it targets opposition groups in Syria that are fighting Islamic State, "Russia will strengthen IS and this can be neither in the Russian interest, nor in our interest."

The defense ministers' meeting, their first since June, is also expected to approve ongoing efforts to retool NATO to meet a daunting array of contemporary security threats. Decisions expected include approval for two new NATO headquarters units in Hungary and Slovakia to enhance their defenses and speed the deployment of reinforcements sent by other alliance nations, and changes in the beefed-up NATO Response Force to, in Stoltenberg's words, make it "bigger, faster and more capable."

"We are facing many challenges from many different directions," Stoltenberg said. "Conflict, instability and insecurity."

"We will assess what we have to do to adapt NATO to current and future challenges," he said_including cyberattacks and the mix of conventional and unconventional tactics commonly known as hybrid warfare.

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NATO ready to defend Turkey amid 'troubling escalation' of ...