Putin Defends Russian Military Aid to Syria

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/europe/russia-syria-military.html

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MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday forcefully defended Russia’s military assistance to Syria, describing it as aid for a government fighting “terrorist aggression” and saying the migrant crisis in Europe would be far worse without it.

The United States has expressed concern about a recent Russian airlift to Syria that is believed to have included military hardware and soldiers.

“If Russia had not supported Syria, the situation in this country would have been worse than in Libya,” Mr. Putin said, and the flood of refugees would have been even higher.” .

Pentagon officials say that Russia has sent some of its most modern battle tanks and other equipment to an airfield near President Bashar al-Assad’s hometown, Latakia, in western Syria, possibly to secure the area as a base for airstrikes in support of the government.

Speaking at a regional security conference in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, Mr. Putin did not address those assertions, but he said that Russian efforts to stiffen the military backbone of Mr. Assad’s government were the best hope to defeat Islamic State militants.

“It’s obvious that without the Syrian authorities and the military playing an active role, without the Syrian Army fighting Islamic State ‘on the ground,’ it’s impossible to drive terrorists from this country and from the region as a whole,” Mr. Putin said.

“We are supporting the government of Syria in the fight against a terrorist aggression, are offering and will continue to offer it necessary military and technical assistance,” he added.

Mr. Putin urged other nations and moderate elements in the Syrian opposition to follow Russia’s example by aligning with the Assad government to defeat the Islamic State, saying Mr. Assad was ready for political compromise with “the healthy part of the opposition.”

Russian officials have characterized the airlift as a humanitarian aid mission, while openly acknowledging, as they have for years, that the government is providing weapons to the Syrian military, a longtime client of the Russian arms industry.

The newspaper Vedomosti, citing an unidentified official described as being close to the Defense Ministry, said on Tuesday that a Russian “military guard” had accompanied an Antonov cargo aircraft to the Latakia field.

The immediate goal in Latakia is to secure and improve the landing strip with new lighting and radio equipment so that it can receive humanitarian aid and military hardware shipments, the newspaper reported.

It said a similar “technical” upgrade was planned at a Russian naval base at Tartus, a Syrian city on the Mediterranean.

“The provision and unloading of Russian cargo was accompanied by a military guard of servicemen, but we are not talking about their participation in combat in Syria,” the newspaper reported.

Critics of the Russian military presence have suggested that Moscow has covertly sent combat troops to Syria in unmarked uniforms or without an official acknowledgment. But Ruslan A. Pukhov, a co-author of an analysis of the Russian military deployment in Ukraine called “Brothers Armed,” said it would be impossible to do that, because Russians could never blend in with a local, Arabic-speaking force.

“We don’t just stand out, we are like aliens,” in Syria, he said.

In comments this summer, Mr. Putin appeared to leave open the possibility of Russian forces entering the fight against the Islamic State, saying, “we are looking at various options.”