Russia sends warplanes to Syria for huge naval drills in Med

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, AP                                                               February 15, 2022

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian military on Tuesday deployed long-range nuclear-capable bombers and fighter jets carrying state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles to its air base in Syria for massive naval drills in the region amid soaring tensions with the West over Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu arrived in Syria to oversee the drills that mark the biggest Russian naval deployment to the Mediterranean Sea since the Cold War times. Shoigu met with Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday to inform him about the drills and discuss plans for further military-technical cooperation.

The Defense Ministry said the exercise in the eastern Mediterranean that involves 15 warships and about 30 aircraft is part of a series of sweeping naval drills that started last month amid a standoff over Ukraine. It said the maneuvers were intended to train for action to “protect national interests” and “fend off military threats against the Russian Federation.”

Long-range, nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bombers and MiG-31 fighter jets carrying the latest Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles landed at the Russian air base of Hemeimeem in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia as part of the drills. The military says the Kinzhal has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound, making it hard to intercept.

The deployment of Kinzhal missiles to Syria appears to be intended to showcase the Russian military’s capability to threaten the U.S. carrier strike group in the Mediterranean.

The Defense Ministry said the Russian navy chief reported to Shoigu that the drills envisaged practice in targeting enemy warships.

The Hemeimeem air base has served as Russia’s main outpost in Syria, where it has waged a military campaign in Syria since September 2015, allowing Assad’s government to reclaim control over most of the country after a devastating civil war.

Russia also has expanded and modified a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus, the only such facility that Russia has outside the former Soviet Union.

The massive Russian naval drills and the deployment of additional warplanes to Syria demonstrated an increased Russian military foothold in the region amid the worst Russia-West security crisis since the Cold War.

U.S. officials say Russia has amassed over 130,000 troops near Ukraine and warned that an invasion could come at any moment.

Moscow has denied any plans to invade its neighbor, but demanded that the West provide guarantees that NATO will not allow Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations to join, will not station weapons there and will roll back alliance deployments in Eastern Europe. The U.S. and its allies have roundly rejected those demands but have offered to discuss with Moscow ways to increase security in Europe.

February 19, 2022 | 1 Comment »
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  1. CNN via Yahoo News:

    Finland’s president sees changes in Putin: ‘It was a different kind of behavior’
    Sun, February 20, 2022, 11:28 AM

    Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
    Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said Sunday that he’s recently seen changes in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s behavior, saying that he now sounds more “decisive” than in the past.

    Niinistö, who has been in close contact with Putin, recalled an exchange the two shared on the phone. During one of the regular calls, Niinistö said he pushed back against Putin by standing up for his country’s sovereignty. That is when Putin switched tones, he said, then began to “officially” read his list of demands.

    “That was a change in his behavior, and I want to guess, and from that I guess that he wants to be very decisive, wants to sound like one. It was a different kind of behavior,” he said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    For decades, Finland has kept a delicate balance in its relationship with Russia, having been invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939. The country, which borders Russia, stayed scrupulously neutral throughout the Cold War, becoming neither part of the Warsaw Pact nor of NATO.

    That delicate balance, however, might be tipped if Russia were to invade Ukraine, which President Joe Biden and others throughout the West have painted as an imminent threat. While Niinistö emphasized his country wasn’t planning on a dramatic change in its relationship with Russia, he suggested Russia’s actions are making Finnish people rethink joining NATO.

    “A lot depends, also, what actually happens in Ukraine and how Russia is going to behave after that,” he said. “If Russia sees a success story for them, that makes them more dangerous.”

    However, he emphasized that Finland doesn’t feel threatened by Russia as of now.

    “Finland is a stable democracy. We are a member of the European Union and part of the West,” he said. “We are not afraid of Russian tanks suddenly crossing the Finnish border.”

    There is no way the president of Finland would talk this way before Russia’s military build-up on the Ukrainian border and his treatening statements. Over the past 77 years, Finaland has been very careful never to say anything in public that could offend Russia. This is the first time, I believe, that any senior Finnish official has talked in public about the possibility of joining NATO.

    The president’s claim that Putin seems to be demonstrating “changes in behavior” is worrisome. Ninisto seems tby this remark to be suggesting that Putin has become mentally unbalanced. Since ninistor claims to know Putin well, this is also very concerning.