More Russian naval presence near Syria

As tensions
continued
to simmer over Syria, Russia has said it
would neither participate in any direct
armed confrontation nor stick to the
sidelines should a war break out in the
Levantine state .
Displaying skills of a veteran
grandmaster used to making calibrated
moves on the diplomatic chessboard, Mr.
Putin chose to rely on studied ambiguity
while carefully deliberating on Moscow's
forthcoming plans.
InHe spoke in a well-timed interview
withto Channel One and the Associated
Press (AP) ahead of the G-20 summit
which is expected to be dominated by
the Syrian crisis, Russian President
Vladimir Putin said: "Certainly, we do
not intend and will not engage in any
conflicts." But he added that, "We have
our own ideas about what and how we
are going to do in the event of conflict
development with the use of weapons, or
without it. We have our own plans, but
it's still too early to talk about it.".
Missiles
If there was a clue about the trajectory
of the President's thinking, it came in
the form of his revelation that Moscow
was ready to arm Syria with "game-
changing" S-300 air defence missiles, if
the need arose.
Moscow would also be ready to transfer
advanced weapons to "some regions in
the world" in case "international
regulations" were violated. "We have a
contract for the delivery of the air
defence systems S-300, we have
delivered some components [to Syria] for
these air defence systems, but the
supplies are not complete, we have
suspended the supplies," the Russian
leader affirmed. However, "if we
witness that some steps are being taken
in violation of the effective international
regulations, we will think it over how we
should act in the future, particularly
regarding the supplies of such sensitive
weapons in some regions of the world".
Mr. Putin said Russia's arsenal of air
defence missiles had grown in
sophistication beyond the S-300 missiles,
signalling that supplies to foreign
partners may not be confined to these
projectiles.
The President pointed out that the S-300
missiles were inferior to the latest S-400
air defence systems and the S-500s,
which were in the developmental stage.
Russia has so far blocked the sales S-300
missiles to Iran, but analysts say that
Moscow's perceptions could change in
case Syria, Tehran's core ally, was
attacked.
Mr. Putin stressed that Moscow would
consider western military action against
Syria outside the sanction of the U.N.
security council as an act of
"aggression".
The Russian President's interview also
seemed timed with a parallel decision by
Moscow to strengthen the naval
presence close to the Syrian coastline in
the Mediterranean, which already has
American warships. Russia's Interfax
news agency quoted a military source as
saying Moscow is dispatching a missile
cruiser to the east Mediterranean to take
over the navy's operations in the region.
The command-and-control ship, Moskva,
will be joined by a destroyer from
Russia's Baltic fleet and a frigate from
the Black Sea fleet.
"The Cruiser Moskva is heading to the
Gibraltar Straits. In approximately 10
days it will enter the east
Mediterranean, where it will take over
as the flagship of the naval task force,"
the source said. Interfax had earlier
reported that Russia was also sending a
reconnaissance ship to the region, which
would operate separately from the main
naval task force.
Russia's incremental naval build up —
far modest than the accumulation of
American warships — is taking place at
a time when the U.S. Senate Foreign
Relations Committee drafted a resolution
on Tuesday permitting up to 60 days of
military action against the government
of President Bashar al-Assad, but
denying presence of any boots on the
ground.