Courcy’s Intelligence Brief
Mixed signals from Kremlin suggestive of complex bargaining
On the face of it, Russia is continuing to provide strong support for both Iran and Syria. In this week’s main briefing, however, we point once again to suggestions that in private Russia might not oppose an Israeli strike on Iran. This week has also seen some mixed signals on Russia’s support for Syria following Syria’s shooting down of a Turkish F-4 Phantom jet on 26 June, which suggests there is some complex behind-the-scenes bargaining taking place.
The Kremlin’s first public reaction to the incident, which came on 26 June, was in line with its usual pro-Syrian position when it said that the shooting down of the Turkish fighter should not be seen as a provocation or as an excuse for stronger action against Damascus. In addition to this formal warning, Russian messages of support for Syria since the incident have included:
- Russia’s proposal that Iran be invited to an international conference on Syria in Geneva on 30 June.
- A report from Interfax on 27 June quoting Russian “military-diplomatic sources” as saying that the sea-borne arms delivery for Syria that was forced to turn back from British waters on 19 June, after a British marine insurer had cancelled cover, could by delivered by air. The shipment includes Russian air-defence systems and three repaired Mi-25 attack helicopters.
- President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to attend the 20th anniversary of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation in Istanbul - a move described by the Turkish media as “a brazen rebuke to Turkey” over Syria.
- The 27 June statement from the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department on pan-European cooperation, Ivan Soltanovskiy, warning that “projecting the Libyan model” on Syria would “throw the region into the abyss of chaos”. Linked to this warning was the statement on 26 June by Russia’s Eastern Military District press service that a large-scale “opposing-force exercise” in Russia’s Khabarovsk Territory was based on an analysis of Nato’s intervention in Libya.
Pointing in the other direction, however, are reports from Moscow that Russia has suspended the planned delivery of $105m worth of S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Syria. The 2011 annual report of the Nizhniy Novgorod Machine-Building Plant (part of the Almaz-Antey air-defence concern) recorded that contracts for the delivery of S-300 systems had been signed with Algeria and Syria and that shipment was due “in the period 2012 to early 2013”. Now sources from Russia’s military-industrial complex are saying that the implementation of the Syrian contract has been suspended “on an order from above...in order to appease Western countries and Israel”.
If nothing else, our own sources say, this suggests the existence of complex behind-the-scenes bargaining between Moscow and Washington, which is of course precisely the type of attention that Moscow has long been courting. The Obama administration is known to be frustrated by the “transactional nature” of the Kremlin’s approach to US-Russia relations, but, as we have pointed out before, all that means is that it is possible to do business with the Kremlin - and it seems that ‘business’ may indeed be what is being done.