Russian Airstrikes Inside Syria Include Areas Controlled By Western-Backed Rebels

Russia has begun a campaign of airstrikes in Syria it says are targeted against ISIS militants, President Vladimir Putin said, marking the Kremlin’s first major intervention in a distant foreign conflict since it invaded Afghanistan during the Soviet Union’s dying days.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Putin said that Russia was acting to preempt the threat posed by Russian-speaking militants in the region, whose numbers the Kremlin estimates at over 2,500. “It’s no secret that the so-called ‘Islamic State’ has long since declared Russia its enemy,’” Putin said, state media reported. “The only true path of fighting international terrorism — the gangs raging in Syria and on the territory of neighboring countries are indeed international terrorists — is to act preemptively, to fight with and destroy militants and terrorists on the territories they have already captured, not to wait for them to come to our house.”

Putin said the campaign would last for the duration of a Syrian ground offensive, state media reported, and not include Russian ground forces. The first wave of airstrikes hit the provinces of Homs, Latakia, and Hana on Wednesday afternoon, AFP reported, citing a Syrian security source. Syrian Civil Defense, a network of emergency workers who rescue Syrians from attacks, counted at least 33 civilians killed in Russian air strikes in Talbiseh and Zaafaraneh, two districts near Homs, including three children and a member of their group, dubbed the White Helmets.

But analysts and Syrian activists claimed the Russian-led effort targeted solely districts controlled by other rebel groups fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Videos posted online showed chaotic scenes of carnage and destruction near the cities of Idlib, Hama and Homs, including areas controlled by the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army rebels. One video that was posted on YouTube purported to show that Russians had targeted the headquarters of the Tajamu al-Izza, a moderate and increasingly effective FSA group vetted by the CIA to receive anti-tank missiles.

“Russia targeted only groups that are not ISIS and it may have targeted groups backed by the US,” said Michael Horowitz, senior intelligence analyst at the Levantine Group, a security consultancy. “It’s really clear that the airstrikes were not meant to target ISIS.”

The commencement of airstrikes under the umbrella of Moscow’s intervention came hours after President Vladimir Putin sought and gained unanimous approval by the upper house of the Russian Duma for limited airstrikes and days after he publicly jousted with U.S. president Barack Obama over Syria policy. The Assad regime said it had approved the intervention as part of a joint effort to combat terrorism.

Russian officials lined up to praise the intervention. “As a great state, we cannot but do our bit to fight this terrible evil,” Valentina Matvienko, chair of the upper house of parliament, said on state television, likening ISIS to a “hydra.” Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya, a mostly Muslim province in Russia’s south from where many of the Russian-speaking ISIS fighters hail, said he was upset that Russia was not using ground forces, and offered to send Chechen divisions to Syria at the first opportunity.

Nearly every official who commented on the airstrikes, including Putin himself, insisted that ground troops would not be used in the campaign. “Of course, our conscripts will not be taking part in any operations abroad,” Gen. Nikolai Bogdanovsky, first deputy chief of general staff, told the Interfax news agency. Memories of the Afghan war in the 1980s, when thousands of Russian conscripts came home in containers marked “CARGO-200,” mean Russians remain wary of an extended ground campaign. Nearly 70% of Russians oppose Moscow providing direct military aid to Assad, according to a recent poll by the independent Levada Center. Several soldiers face treason charges after refusing deployment to Syria, according to the news site Gazeta.ru.

State television, whose war correspondents have relocated from eastern Ukraine to Syria in recent weeks, showed rolling images of destruction it said was caused by ISIS. Leaders of state-sanctioned religious organizations voiced their approval to state newswires. “Syria is almost our neighbor, it’s not far from our southern border, and if someone across the ocean has anything to do with what’s happening there, it affects us all the more,” said Talgat Salfuddin, Russia’s grand mufti.

Vsevolod Chaplin, a senior figure in the Russian Orthodox Church, said that Russia’s fight against terrorism was “sacred” — a clear reference to “Sacred War,” the most famous Soviet battle hymn from World War II. Putin evoked the coalition against Hitler in his address to the United Nations on Monday, saying that he intended to lead a global “anti-terrorist coalition” in its image.

Days earlier, Putin and other senior Russian officials disclosed the formation of a Baghdad-based operations and intelligence center meant to coordinate Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian and Russian efforts against ISIS. But Tehran and Moscow have always used an expansive definition of ISIS to include all rebel groups fighting against the Assad regime, which ignited a civil war more than four years ago when it used the full brunt of its armed forces against peaceful protesters demanding political change.

The Assad regime provides Russia with a Middle East stronghold and grants Iran a conduit to funnel weapons to Hezbollah, its ally in Lebanon. But Western powers insist he and his family leave power before any peace can be forged. France on Wednesday announced an investigation into the Assad regime’s alleged crimes against humanity.

Videos posted online showed huge clouds of grey smoke rising spied into the sky while collapsed buildings burned in Talbiseh, a district on the outskirts of Homs, far from any ISIS stronghold.