Top Air Force general in Middle East: Russia dials back provocative air operations in Syria

After spending months buzzing U.S. military bases in Syria and harassing American drones searching for terrorists, Russia now appears to be dialing back on some of its aerial provocations, the head of air operations for the U.S. Central Command said Wednesday.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said he saw “favorable shifts in behavior” from the Russians last month, shifts that he called “broadly de-escalatory.”

Nevertheless, the pace of Russian activity in the skies over Syria has remained relatively constant, Lt. Gen. Grynkewich told reporters with the D.C.-based Defense Writers Group.

“In the past, I would have told you that I was very concerned about Russian aircraft armed with air-to-ground weapons flying directly over our forces,” Gen. Grynkewich said Wednesday. “That’s very rare. It hasn’t happened for several weeks.”

Analysts say Russia has had to dial back some foreign policy priorities — such as its longstanding tilt toward Armenia in its long-running clash with neighboring Azerbaijan — as its forces focus on the troubled military campaign in Ukraine.

Russian aircraft continue intercepting U.S.-made MQ-9 drones — although they haven’t dropped flares on them since early July. They’re still flying into sensitive places like the airspace over the Al-Tanf border garrison, which since 2016 has served as a launching point for counter-Islamic State operations and a training ground for Syrian opposition forces fighting the jihadist group.

“They still fly in the air space but not directly over our forces. I welcome that shift in behavior,” Lt. Gen. Grynkewich said.

Russia has been operating in Syria since September 2015 after the ruling al-Assad government asked Moscow for military assistance in battling the Islamic State and opposition groups, including those supported by the U.S. Damascus and Moscow both argue that U.S. forces have no legal right to operate inside Syria and are only helping to prolong the bloody Syrian civil war begun more than a decade ago.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a British-based organization that monitors casualties from the fighting, said Russian forces have killed more than 6,900 civilians in Syria, including 2,046 children, and carried out 1,246 attacks on civilian facilities. The Kremlin also offers diplomatic support for Syria, using its veto power to block any condemnation of the Assad regime’s actions at the UN Security Council.

“Russia’s intervention in Syria is unlawful because it is based on a request by an illegitimate regime that claimed power through fire and iron, rather than through a constitution and legitimate elections,” Fadel Abdul Ghany, the group’s executive director said. “Russian forces chose to intervene in support of a regime that was, and is, engaged in perpetrating crimes against humanity, before even mentioning the war crimes and crimes against humanity which Russia itself has committed in Syria.”

Gen. Grynkewich said the Wagner Group mercenary army still has “a few hundred” troops operating in Syria. But Russian military commanders have sought to strengthen their control over the group following the aborted rebellion in late June of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin and several top Wagner Group aides were killed about five months later in a plane crash in Russia that is widely suspected to have been engineered by the Kremlin.

The Wagner fighters are operating in close proximity to the main Russian military force in Syria, Gen. Grynkewich said.

“As the Wagner rebellion was ongoing, we saw some tensions between those forces,” he said. “The relationship appears to be sustaining.

Russian military commanders in Syria want the ability to assign missions to the Wagner troops but are leaving the tactics up to them. Both sides appear to have reached some sort of understanding.

“They’ll continue to operate side by side for a while,” Gen. Grynkewich said.