Free Republic

Putin’s dialing down of the rhetoric is an effort to mask his intentions. He — Russia — still has the same foreign policy interests in Syria as he did before the plane was shot down, and those aren’t going to change anytime soon. When journalists asked him about the much more hostile statement of his Defense Ministry, which also vowed a retaliatory response, Putin stated clearly that it was “fully coordinated” with him (of course it was). He defined what ‘retaliatory’ meant. “The retaliatory measures will be directed above all to boosting the security of military men and installations in...

In the Russian MoD statement, the government is accusing the Israelis of not giving Russia enough time to get its forces out of the area, and given the information available at the moment, that seems likely. Did the Israeli Defense Force miscalculate on this one? The Israelis, as noted in the above report, have routinely attacked targets in Syria deemed to be a threat to the Jewish state’s security. Most of the time those attacks have been aimed at Iranian installations but Syrian government bases have also been targeted in the past.

A Russian maritime patrol aircraft with multiple personnel on board was inadvertently shot down by Syrian regime anti-aircraft artillery on Monday after the Syrians came under attack by Israeli missiles, according to a US official with knowledge of the incident The US official said the regime was actually trying to stop a barrage of Israeli missiles. A second official confirmed that Israel was responsible for the missile strikes on the Syrian regime. The Russian state news agency TASS reported that a Russian IL-20 military aircraft with 14 personnel on board disappeared over the Mediterranean on Monday. According to TASS, the...