Russia launched its first airstrikes on ISIS terrorists in war-torn Syria on Wednesday after President Vladimir Putin won parliamentary permission to use force abroad.
It is Moscow’s first military engagement in a distant theatre of war since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Putin said the action was pre-emptive, warning that Moscow would be hunting down ISIS militants before they target Russia.
“The only correct way to fight international terrorism is to act preemptively, to battle and destroy fighters and terrorists on the territories they have already seized, not to wait for them to come to us,” Putin said in televised comments.
The Russian Defence Ministry said Moscow had launched targeted air raids against the “terrorists” in Syria. A Syrian security source said the war planes hit three provinces.
The strikes came as Putin and US President Barack Obama push rival plans on ways to defeat ISIS in Syria and on the future role of the country’s embattled leader Bashar al-Assad.
“They gave us a heads-up they were going to start striking in Syria,” a US Defence official said. “It was in the vicinity of Homs.” Putin had just hours earlier won permission from the Upper House of Parliament, the Federation Council, to deploy troops abroad.
The United States was given one hour’s notice before the strike took place, the official said. The notice was sent in Baghdad, where the Russians have set up a coordination unit with Iraq’s Government. A high-ranking Russian officer there notified a US military official at the US Embassy in Baghdad, the US official said.
It was not clear whether the target of the Russian airstrike was ISIS or more moderate Syrian rebels combating the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the official added.
The US had not yet assessed the damages from the airstrike.
“The Federation Council unanimously supported the president’s request,” Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov said. He said the decision was taken after Assad asked Russia for military support, a request confirmed by Damascus.
Ivanov, a former Defence Minister, declined to give details of the operation, saying only it would be limited in duration and ruling out ground operations by Russian troops.
Putin is seeking to muscle his way back onto the world stage after months of Western isolation following Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and support for a separatist insurgency in the east of the ex-Soviet country.
Addressing the UN General Assembly for the first time in a decade, Putin on Monday proposed a broad UN-backed coalition to fight ISIS militants and clashed with Obama on the future of Assad. Washington and its allies blame Assad for the mayhem in Syria, where four years of bloodshed have killed more than 2,40,000 people.
It was also not immediately apparent whether the attack signified the start of regular Russian airstrikes.
Both the US and Russia view ISIS as a common enemy, but Russia supports Assad’s regime as the most effective force battling the militant group, while the US wants Assad to step aside because of atrocities it says he has committed against civilians to retain power during Syria’s four-year-old civil war. The US is backing Syrian rebel groups that have so far have proven ineffective against the Islamic State and Assad’s forces.
“The purpose of these de-confliction discussions will be to ensure that ongoing coalition air operations are not interrupted by any future Russian military activity, to ensure the safety of coalition air crews and to avoid misjudgement and miscalculation,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook had said on Tuesday.