Su-35 fighter – © Marina Lystseva/TASS
On June 16, Russian fighter jets carried out a series of sorties over the United States garrison in the southeastern Syrian area of al-Tanf, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Around 200 U.S. troops are usually deployed at al-Tanf, which blocks a strategic highway linking the Syrian capital, Damascus, with Baghdad, the capital of neighboring Iraq. The U.S.-led coalition maintains a 55-kilometer no-fly zone around the garrison.
The London-based monitoring group said that Russian fighter jets flew over the no-fly zone, reaching as far as the Syrian border with Iraq and Jordan.
Just two days earlier, the U.S. Central Command announced that stealth F-22 Raptors fighter jets were deployed from Langley Air Force Base to the Middle East due to what it described as an “increasingly unsafe and unprofessional behavior” by Russian fighter jets in the region.
The command later released a video showing the Raptors arriving at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in northern Jordan. The base is located around 250 kilometers away from al-Tanf garrison.
Tensions between Russian and U.S. forces in Syria have been mounting since Moscow launched a special military operation in Ukraine last year.
In the last few months, the U.S. accused the Russian Aerospace Forces of violating safety protocols over Syria on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that American pilots were activating their weapon systems against its fighter jets.
Besides the garrison in al-Tanf, the U.S. maintains some 600 more troops at key gas and oil fields in Syria’s northeastern region. Washington claims that it is present in the country only to fight ISIS. The Damascus government does not approve of this presence and consider it an occupation.
The Russian military presence in Syria, which is sanctioned by Damascus, is much larger. Russian troops are deployed at two large bases in the western region and dozens of smaller positions throughout the country.
The sorties over al-Tanf were likely meant as a message to the U.S. that the deployment of the F-22 will not limit Russian operations over Syria. Al-Tanf in particular is considered tobe a threat by Moscow. Last month, Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, accused the U.S. of training ISIS terrorists at the garrison.
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