Russia Deploying Anti-Aircraft Missiles in Syria after Turkey Shot Fight...

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Russia Deploying Anti-Aircraft Missiles in Syria after Turkey Shot Fighter Jet.



Tensions rise as Russia says it's deploying anti-aircraft missiles to Syria

Tensions in the Middle East ratcheted up dangerously Wednesday, a day after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane, with the Turkish President accusing Russia of deceit and Russia announcing it would deploy anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.



Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said on his ministry's Twitter feed that the country would deploy S-400 defense missile systems to its Hmeymim airbase near Latakia, on Syria's Mediterranean coast.



The missiles have a range of 250 kilometers, according to the missilethreat.com website -- or 155 miles. The Turkish border is less than 30 miles away.



And Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian TV on Wednesday that Russia has "serious doubts" that Turkey's downing of its warplane Tuesday was "an unpremeditated act."



"It looks very much like a planned provocation," Lavrov said.



For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned what he said was the violation of Turkish airspace by Russian warplanes, calling the incident an infringement of his country's sovereignty.



He charged Russia with propping up the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad -- a regime he said was inflicting terrorism on its own people. His remarks came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of being "the terrorists' accomplices" for shooting down a plane he claimed was on an anti-terrorism mission.



Erdogan disputed that claim in a speech Wednesday.



"There is no Daesh," in the area where the Russian planes were flying, Erdogan said, using another name for ISIS. "Do not deceive us! We know the locations of ISIS."

An alarming wave of international turbulence

And experts agreed.



"None of the targets that ... the Russians were going after had anything to do with ISIS. Those were all those Turkmen groups," said CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel.





The Turkmen minority in that part of northern Syria has strong ties to the Turkish government, which wants to afford them a degree of protection. Anyone who bombs that area attacks "our brothers and sisters -- Turkmen," Erdogan said.



Erdogan said Turkey had no intention of escalating the situation. But the fire in his words showed that the conflict in Syria has now churned up a new and alarming wave of international turbulence.



High stakes are at play in Syria, where the United States, Russia and a swarm of other global, regional and local forces are entangled in the civil war.



Turkey, a NATO member, said it had repeatedly warned the Russian warplane, shooting it down only after it ignored several warnings and violated Turkish airspace. Russia rejected that version of events, saying the Sukhoi Su-24 bomber was attacked 1 kilometer inside Syrian territory.



But Erdogan claimed parts of the downed plane had fallen inside Turkey, injuring two people.





Adding to the tensions were the fates of the two Russian pilots aboard the bomber.



Turkmen rebels operating in the area of Syria where the plane went down appeared to claim in a video that they shot both pilots to death as they parachuted toward the ground. CNN couldn't independently confirm the claim.



The Russian military said it believed one of the pilots was dead. The Russian Defense ministry said Wednesday that the second pilot had been rescued and was safe.



The military also said a Russian marine was killed when a helicopter came under attack during the search-and-rescue efforts.

Russian Fighter Downed, Angry Putin Sends Strong Message to Turkey with ...

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Russian Fighter Downed, Angry Putin Sends Strong Message to Turkey with Missile Destroyer Moskva.

A Russia expert explains how Putin will likely respond to his downed plane Updated by Zack Beauchamp on November 24, 2015, 5:30 p.m. ET @zackbeauchamp zack@vox.com On Tuesday, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that it says had crossed into its airspace from Syria. Though Russia denies it had violated Turkish airspace, Turkey has been complaining of such Russian violations ever since Russia began its military intervention in Syria this September. To understand why Russia might do this and how Moscow might respond to this incident, I called Mark Galeotti, a professor at NYU's Center for Global Affairs who focuses on Russia. He suggested that Russia could have been poking at NATO, as it has in the past, but also discussed some much deeper, and more important, issues in the Russia-Turkey relationship and Russia's military adventure in Syria. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. Zack Beauchamp: Why would Russia fly into Turkey's airspace in the first place? Mark Galeotti: There are a few possible reasons. First is pilot error. They were operating near the border and so strayed over by mistake. It's unlikely, given modern avionics, but nonetheless we can't completely exclude the possibility. The second thing is that this could, since Turkey is a NATO state, have been Russia just trying to flex its political-diplomatic muscles. Wanting to make the point that they can do this with impunity — which, of course, they have done in NATO's northern reaches. The third possibility is that this was just a brief foray into Turkish airspace, and the bomber pilot was just setting up an attack run. And given that the Turks are actively supporting some pretty toxic rebel groups, it could have been that the target was just inside Turkish borders. That's the problem when you have a target-rich environment on both sides of the borderline. It's [also] worth noting that we heard that one of the two pilots was gunned down by rebels while parachuting down, which means that it's possible that it was in Syria. Nonetheless, the fact that the Russians are operating so close to the Turkish border in any case does say something about a certain arrogance and a certain brinksmanship. Zack Beauchamp: Speaking of brinksmanship: Immediately after the attack, Putin threatened "serious consequences" for the Turks after the plane went down. How seriously should we take his threat? Mark Galeotti: These days it's very hard to predict Putin. But I suspect Moscow is not keen to start yet another diplomatic war, let alone anything more than that. They're stuck in a quagmire in Ukraine. There's a very dangerous commitment to Syria. They have a whole series of international sanctions on them. What we're likely to see is some kind of symbolic act: maybe banning Turkish airliners from landing in Russian airports, some kind of economic sanctions, words with the Turkish ambassador, that kind of thing. [Ed. note: after this conversation, the Russian Ministry of Defense suspended military-to-military communications with its Turkish counterparts.] At the same time, they'll hope for there being even the faintest signs of contrition from Ankara, which would allow Putin to tell the Russian people that "the Turks messed up, the Turks have acknowledged that, we move on." Zack Beauchamp: So what is the Russian public reaction to this going to be? Mark Galeotti: The first indications are that there's a definite surge of public anger. They only know what the Kremlin is going to tell them, which is that this was a Turkish attack on a Russian plane over Syria while it was trying to bomb terrorist targets. All Putin's rhetoric about being stabbed in the back will have resonance, particularly because Russians — even more so than many other people — are very conscious of their history. Russia has a long pre-Soviet history of rivalry with the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and a sense that the Turks are not to be trusted, rooted in crude cultural stereotypes. But one has to realize that it's not as though they're demanding war: They can, to a large extent, be modulated and if need be distracted through the state controlled media. I don't think this is, in any meaningful sense, a constraint on the Kremlin. "TURKEY HAS — AT BEST — BEEN A FRENEMY TO MOSCOW" In Russia, the whole Syrian adventure has been played as "strike the terrorists in Syria before we have to fight them in Russia." It's been sold as an operation that's tremendously successful. You could argue with how effective the airstrikes are — let's be honest, the best the Russian airstrikes can do is slightly slow the rate at which Assad is losing the war; they won't turn the tide. But that's not how it's being sold in Moscow. Finally, it's been sold as a safe operation: no large ground troop commitments, the

Russia Deploys Missile Cruiser Moskva off Syria Coast to Destroy Any Danger

www.youtube.com/murdikar007 Russia Deploys Missile Cruiser Moskva off Syria Coast to Destroy Any Danger.

Russia deploys missile cruiser off Syria coast, ordered to destroy any target posing danger

Moscow plans to suspend military cooperation with Ankara after the downing of a Russian bomber by Turkish air forces, Russian General Staff representatives said on Tuesday. Further measures to beef up Russian air base security in Syria will also be taken.

Each and every strike groups’ operation is to be carried out under the guise of fighter jets

Air defense to be boosted with the deployment of Moskva guided missile cruiser off Latakia coast with an aim to destroy any target that may pose danger

Military contacts with Turkey to be suspendedSergey Rudskoy, a top official with the Russian General Staff, condemned the attack on the Russian bomber in Syrian airspace by a Turkish fighter jet as “a severe violation of international law”. He stressed that the Su-24 was downed over the Syrian territory. The crash site was four kilometers away from the Turkish border, he said.

Rudskoy said the Russian warplane did not violate Turkish airspace. Additionally, according to the Hmeymim airfield radar, it was the Turkish fighter jet that actually entered Syrian airspace as it attacked the Russian bomber.



The Turkish fighter jet made no attempts to contact Russian pilots before attacking the bomber, Rudskoy added.



“We assume the strike was carried out with a close range missile with an infra-red seeker,” Rudskoy said. “The Turkish jet made no attempts to communicate or establish visual contact with our crew that our equipment would have registered. The Su-24 was hit by a missile over Syria’s territory.”

ussia now plans to implement new measures aimed at strengthening the security of the country’s air base in Syria and in particular to bolster air defense.



Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva, equipped with the ‘Fort’ air defense system, similar to the S-300, will be deployed off Latakia province's coast.



"We warn that every target posing a potential threat will be destroyed,” lieutenant general Sergey Rudskoy said during the briefing.



The Moskva (‘Moscow’) missile cruise is a flagship vessel of the Russian Black Sea fleet and is one of the fleet’s two biggest ships. The cruiser was stationed in Sevastopol but left in summer 2015 after being deployed to the Mediterranean Sea where it joined Russia’s standing naval force in the Mediterranean.



Since September 30, the Moskva cruiser acts as a covering force for the Russian air forces in Syria while deployed in the eastern Mediterranean.



“All military contacts with Turkey will be suspended,” Rudskoy added.

Turkey claims that it downed the Russian bomber in Turkish airspace after the plane was given 10 warnings in the space of five minutes as it approached the country’s territory.



"Nobody should doubt that we made our best efforts to avoid this latest incident. But everyone should respect the right of Turkey to defend its borders," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.



"The data we have is very clear. There were two planes approaching our border, we warned them as they were getting too close," another senior Turkish official told Reuters.



"Our findings show clearly that Turkish air space was violated multiple times. And they violated it knowingly."



US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Francois Hollande urged Russia and Turkey away from further escalation during a meeting in Washington, while NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg voiced the alliance’s support for Turkey.



A US military spokesman also said that the incident involves only Turkey and Russia and does not affect the US-led campaign in Syria, which will continue “as planned”.