Defense Secretary Ash Carter has ordered U.S. military officials to open talks with their Russian counterparts aimed at ensuring the two countries’ forces in Syria don’t come into conflict, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said logistics of the talks would take a few days to work out before they could begin. While he would not rule out closer coordination between the two countries’ forces, he said the initial discussions would focus on “deconfliction.”
“We do not want misjudgments and miscalculations. We do not want an accident to take place,” Cook told reporters. “Our first goal here is to avoid conflict in the air.”
The upcoming talks are the latest sign of U.S. accommodation to the new reality created by Russia’s military intervention in Syria in support of embattled dictator Bashar al-Assad. In the past few weeks, Moscow has moved ground troops, high performance fighter jets and sophisticated air defense systems into the country, backing up a flurry of diplomatic activity that has upended the global conversation about Syria’s future and left Washington playing catch-up.
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Russia has said it plans to enter the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, where a U.S.-led coalition has been conducting bombing missions against the group for more than a year.
But the sophistication of the deployed Russian forces, which are clustered near an existing Russian facility in the Mediterranean port city of Tartus, concerns Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, who suggested Monday that Moscow was seeking to create a “bubble” in the area that could deter any action against Assad.
“We see some very sophisticated air defenses going into these airbases. We see some very sophisiticated air-to-air-capable airplanes going into these airbases,” Breedlove said in a speech to the German Marshall Fund, noting that the Islamic State does not have an air force.
“These very sophisticated air defense capabilities are not about ISIL. They’re about something else,” he said. “High on Mr. Putin’s list in Syria is preserving the regime against those that are putting pressure on the regime and against those that they see who might be supporting those putting pressure on the regime.”
