Russian flyovers of US occupation bases in Syria risk escalation: US general
CENTCOM says Russian jets, bombers, and drones have conducted ‘dozens’ of flyovers over Washington’s illegal Al-Tanf base in recent weeks
By
News Desk
– April 26 2023
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US army officials have decried that Russian jet fighters and drones are “harassing” Washington’s occupation bases in Syria and warned that the situation raises the risk of a “miscalculation.”
“It’s a ripe situation for us to see some sort of miscalculation … It signals a breakdown in professionalism that I have never seen out of the Russian Air Force,” General Alexus Grynkewich, the head of the US Air Force Central Command (CENTCOM), told the New York Times this week.
According to Grynkewich, since 1 March, the Russian air force has markedly increased its activities above US occupation bases in southern Syria, and at times Russian jets have flown “dangerously close” to US warplanes.
Per a tenuous agreement between Washington and Moscow, Russian jets must stay at least three nautical miles away from US warplanes. However, Grynkewich says that in recent weeks the Kremlin’s forces have gotten as close as 150 meters to US pilots.
On top of this, Russian jets, bombers, and drones have conducted “more than two dozen” flyovers of Washington’s largest occupation base in Syria, known as Al-Tanf, since the beginning of March.
Last month, CENTCOM chief General Michael Kurilla decried the Russian flyovers of Al-Tanf, calling them “provocative, unsafe, and unprofessional.”
“They fly into the airspace that is nominally under the deconfliction protocols, supposed to be where we are primarily operating, and the Russians are not,” Grynkewich said at the time.
Around 900 US troops are still deployed in the Levantine nation, controlling nearly a third of the country and a large portion of its oil fields. Their deployment is illegal under international law as it was not approved by the government in Damascus and was launched by abusing Washington’s Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).
Contrary to the illegal US occupation and hijacking of Syria’s resources, the Russian army has been present since 2015 after Damascus requested military assistance to push back against ISIS and other US-sponsored extremist groups.
