Posted on 03/02/2020 3:33:56 PM PST by Roman_War_Criminal
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that Moscow could not guarantee the safety of Turkish planes flying in Syria after Damascus said it was closing the air space over the Idlib region, the TASS news agency reported.
The ministry issued the warning after Turkey shot down two Syrian warplanes over Idlib on Sunday and struck a military airport well beyond its frontlines in a sharp increase of its military operations following the death of dozens of Turkish soldiers last week.
“In these conditions the leadership of Russia’s military contingent (in Syria) cannot guarantee the safety of Turkish flights in Syrian skies,” TASS cited Counter Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev as saying.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
You want war with Russia? Go ahead and make our day.
Go Russia!
About time the Turkish bullies were taken down.
I’m glad the US pulled out of that shit-hole.
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks!
“That’s nobody’s business but the Turks!”
I see what you did there. For the youngsters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcze7EGorOk
Okay, that was written in diplonese. Allow me to translate to English. “We are going to shoot your planes down.”
My ear worm version
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rHRd6Cl-tQ
I suspect that Russia will give Turkey a bloody nose, and then things will end there. Trump sure as hell has no interest in helping Turkey with their aggression.
Well the Russian planes were not safe within shooting range of the Turks a few years ago.
Sneak attacks are a staple of NATO military strategy.
Russia will probably get its clock cleaned. Geography is on Erdogan’s side. He has land access to Syria, and Putin doesn’t.
The easiest way of preventing Turkey from doing whatever it wants in Syria would be an attack across the Russian border with Turkey to force the Turks to divert their forces away from Syria. Problem is Article 5 of the NATO Charter, involving an allied response to attacks against a NATO member’s territory, would come into play. The Article 4 meeting might have been an attempt to gin up NATO support just in case the Russians decide to start bombing Turkish bases from facilities in Russia proper.
It would be interesting to see whether Putin orders airstrikes against Turkey from Russian bases, if the Turks move further into Syria, and perhaps against the Russian air base there. However, I seriously doubt the Russians want to start trading aircraft with the Turks, because they’re pretty expensive. But it could happen, if Erdogan ups the ante. The issue for Putin is that the Turkish air force is a lot more capable than what the Ukrainians and Georgians had, both equipment- and personnel-wise. NATO standards are fairly high, and Turkey is one of the better-armed NATO members.
And when I say the land border with Turkey, I mean Armenia, even though that is separated from Russia proper by countries not necessarily friendly to Russia, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan. One of them could, however, be paid off, on a one-off basis to let supplies through to Armenia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_102nd_Military_Base
It would take Russia about 3-6 months to mobilize for such a war. They could use the Caucasus Region to maneuver but that would take a good bit of time (like Georgia 2008).
I still think there is a lot of hot air going back & forth between these nations. Interesting times for sure.
Make Constantinople Great Again!
Turkey could probably give the Russians some real problems.
For the August War it took several hours to mobilize. Although I don’t expect any war in this case.
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