Putin Calls Downing of Russian Plane in Syria ‘Tragic,’ Absolves Israel

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A Russian IL-20 military plane in 2006. Syrian antiaircraft missiles shot down an IL-20 aircraft off the Syrian coast on Monday.CreditCreditNikita Shchyukin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By David M. Halbfinger and Andrew Higgins

Sept. 18, 2018

JERUSALEM — Syrian antiaircraft batteries responding to an Israeli airstrike Monday night downed a Russian military plane, killing 15 of its service members, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The downing of the plane in what Russia called a case of “friendly fire” raised immediate questions about the Israeli military’s freedom of action inside Syria, where Israel has been able to mount more than 200 airstrikes in two years thanks in large part to Russian forbearance.

But that speculation was dampened on Tuesday by Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, who laid blame for the crash of the Russian Ilyushin Il-20 surveillance aircraft on “a chain of tragic accidental circumstances” and not just on Israel.

Mr. Putin drew a distinction between the downing of a Russian fighter plane by Turkey in 2015, which he condemned at the time as a “stab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists,” and Monday’s accident, “because an Israeli plane didn’t shoot our plane down.”

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry had angrily accused Israel of hiding its F-16s behind the Russian plane, effectively turning the less stealthy Russian Il-20 into a target for Syria’s antiaircraft missiles. Russia also suggested that Israel had abused the countries’ coordination system that is meant to avoid such accidents, by providing only a minute’s notice before its fighters struck a Syrian air base — too little time for the Russian plane to be kept out of the crossfire.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, left, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in Sochi, Russia, on Monday.CreditPool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko

“We reserve the right to take adequate measures in response,” Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, had said, the news agency Interfax reported.

In a departure from its normal policy of refusing comment on military actions, the Israeli Defense Forces released a lengthy statement that expressed sorrow for the loss of life and held the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad “fully responsible.” It added that Iran and Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group that operates in Syria and that is a bitter enemy of Israel, were also accountable.

Citing an “intolerable threat,” Israel said its jets were targeting a military facility in Syria from which weapons-manufacturing systems were to be transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It added that the antiaircraft missiles fired by Syria had been inaccurate and had been fired indiscriminately.

The statement went on to say that the Russian jet was not in the area when Israeli warplanes made their attack on the Syrian weapons facility, and that the Israeli jets were already back in Israel’s airspace at the time the surveillance plane was shot down.

Israel has long enjoyed the tacit support of Russia in pursuing its own agenda in Syria of preventing Iran both from establishing a military presence there and from supplying Hezbollah with advanced weaponry. That has required extensive efforts to guard against inadvertent incidents, with close coordination at various levels of the chain of command in both countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has assiduously sought Mr. Putin’s acquiescence, with nine visits to Moscow in the past three years. Israeli media outlets reported Tuesday that Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu planned to speak with the Russian president before the start of Yom Kippur.

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The deputy ambassador of Israel to Russia, Keren Cohen Gat, center right, leaving the Foreign Ministry in Moscow after being summoned on Tuesday.CreditYuri Kochetkov/EPA, Shutterstock

The state-controlled Russian news media, which fumed furiously against Turkey in 2015 and denounced Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a gangster and criminal, gave only measured coverage of the downing of the surveillance plane and obscured the fact that its Syrian ally was responsible.

This is in keeping with the Kremlin’s policy of generally downplaying Russian losses in a Syrian conflict that Moscow joined in Sept. 2015. Accused by his critics of military adventurism, President Putin has sought to present Russia’s military support for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to his people as a mostly cost-free operation that asserts Russian influence as a great power and affords its armed forces opportunities to train for combat in other theaters.

State television on Tuesday focused not on the loss of the Russian plane but the inauguration of Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin loyalist who was re-elected to his post on Sept. 9, and a meeting between Mr. Putin and the visiting president of Hungary, Viktor Orban.

The shoot down came on the same day that the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said that Syria would refrain from launching an offensive on Idlib Province, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.

Russia has been the most important backer for Mr. Assad during Syria’s long-running civil war, now approaching eight years, and it has sent warplanes and troops to support him, recently deploying a large flotilla of warships to the region.

Mr. Shoigu’s announcement came after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Erdogan appeared to delay what had been forecast to be a bloody assault on Idlib by agreeing to establish a “demilitarized zone” there.

At least three million Syrian civilians and 30,000 insurgent fighters, including Qaeda-linked jihadists, have been cornered in Idlib, the last significant piece of territory in Syria that Mr. Assad does not control. Rights advocates had warned of a blood bath there in the event of an all-out assault by the Syrians. Mr. Assad has vowed, however, to eventually reassert control over the entire country.

David M. Halbfinger reported from Jerusalem, and Andrew Higgins from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer, Sophia Kishkovsky and Ivan Nechepurenko from Moscow, and Mike Ives from Hong Kong.