Russia begins Syria air strikes in its biggest Mideast intervention in decades

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday in its biggest Middle East intervention in decades, plunging the four-year-old civil war into a volatile new phase as President Vladimir Putin moved forcefully to stake out influence in the unstable region.

Moscow's assertion that it had hit Islamic State militants was immediately disputed by the United States and rebels on the ground. The attacks also raised the dangerous specter of Washington and Moscow running air strikes concurrently and in the same region, but without coordination.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks at the United Nations that they agreed their countries should meet very soon on the Syrian situation.

"We agreed on the imperative of as soon as possible, perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, but as soon as possible, having a military-to-military deconfliction discussion," Kerry said.

To "deconflict", in military parlance, is to ensure that, in this case, Russian aircraft do not accidentally clash in any way with Western warplanes.

A U.S. defense official confirmed that talks between the U.S. and Russian militaries could take place within the next day, possibly via secure video-conference or in person. The Pentagon aimed to involve both civilian and uniformed defense officials in the talks.

The U.S. State Department said a Russian diplomat in Baghdad notified the United States of the intended air strikes an hour in advance and warned that American aircraft that have been pressing a daily bombing campaign against Islamic State positions should avoid Syrian airspace.

Kerry said the Russian warning was ignored and U.S. air strikes continued on Wednesday.

Putin said he was striking against Islamic State and helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, long Russia's closest ally in the region, in this aim.

But Washington is concerned that Moscow is more interested in propping up Assad, who the United States has long held should leave office, than in beating Islamic State. Assad's opponents in the brutal civil war include rebel groups that oppose both him and Islamic State and that are supported by the United States and other Western countries.

The Russian defense ministry said it carried out about 20 flights over Syria, hitting eight Islamic State targets and destroying an Islamic State command post and an operations center in a mountainous area, Russian agencies reported.

Syrians living in rebel-held areas of Homs province said the Russian air force unleashed a whole new level of devastation on their towns. Jets flying at higher altitudes than the Syrian air force emitted no noise to alert the people below to raids that were reported to have killed at least 33 civilians, including children.

Moscow's intervention means the conflict in Syria has been transformed in a few months from a proxy war, in which outside powers were arming and training mostly Syrians to fight each other, to an international conflict in which the world’s main military powers except China are directly involved in fighting.

Russia joined the United States and its Arab allies, Turkey, France, Iran and Israel in direct intervention, with Britain expected to join soon, if it gets parliamentary approval.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said of the strikes: "It does appear that they were in areas where there probably were not ISIL forces, and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach." ISIL is one of the acronyms for Islamic State, which has seized control of large areas of Syria and Iraq over the past year.

Western-backed Syrian opposition chief Khaled Khoja said the Russian strikes had killed 36 civilians and no rebel fighters, and accused Russia of seeking only to keep Assad in power.

DANGER IN THE SKIES

Moscow's move meant that warplanes from both the United States and Russia will be sharing the skies above Syria.

"I'm especially concerned because there has been no real effort by the Russian side to deconflict the Russian air strikes in Syria with the ongoing U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIL," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to the United States.

Reflecting growing tension between the big powers, Kerry phoned his Russian counterpart Lavrov early on Wednesday to tell him the United States regarded the strikes as dangerous, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Russia was moving to "ramp up" support for Assad, adding: "They've made a significant military investment now in further propping him up."

Russia Sends Attack Helicopters to Syria, U.S. Official Says

Four Russian attack helicopters and four Russian transport helicopters have arrived in Syria in the past day, and Russia is also preparing to send attack jets, a senior American defense official told NBC News on Friday.

The disclosure came hours after the top U.S. and Russian defense officials spoke on the phone for the first time in more than a year to talk about the crisis in Syria, where Russia is building a military presence.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu told his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, that the Russian buildup is "defensive in nature," according to a senior U.S. defense official.

Shoygu also said that the buildup was to honor Russian commitments to the Syrian government, the official said. The official refused to speculate that those commitments might include Russian military support and protection of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Russian military support for the Assad government, which U.S. military officials say would probably include airstrikes against Syrian rebels attempting to overthrow the regime, would create a dilemma for the Obama administration. President Obama has long stressed that the Assad regime "must go."

The Pentagon described the conversation between Carter and Shoygu as constructive and said they agreed to keep talking. They talked about ways to de-escalate the conflict in Syria and fight ISIS, the Pentagon said.

Satellite imagery on Thursday showed the recent arrival of Russian tanks and other military equipment at an air base in the Latakia coastal region of Syria. The Pentagon said on Monday that it had seen a "continued steady flow" of equipment and people for more than a week.

The eight helicopters that have arrived in the past day are based just outside Latakia, the official said.

Russia supports the Assad government, while the United States supports the insurgents fighting him in a bloody four-year civil war.

The United States suspended talks between its military and the Russian military last year, after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

Russia positioning tanks at Syria airfield: U.S. officials

Russia has positioned about a half dozen tanks at an airfield at the center of a military buildup in Syria, two U.S. officials said on Monday, adding that the intentions of Moscow's latest deployment of heavy military equipment were unclear.

Moscow has come under increased international pressure in recent days to explain its moves in Syria, where the Kremlin has been supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a 4-1/2-year war.

The Pentagon declined to directly comment on the Reuters report, saying it could not discuss U.S. intelligence. But a U.S. Defense Department spokesman said recent actions by Moscow suggested plans to establish a forward air operating base.

"We have seen movement of people and things that would indicate that they plan to use that base there, south of Latakia, as a forward air operating base," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told a news briefing.

One of the U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said seven Russian T-90 tanks had been observed at the airfield near Latakia, an Assad stronghold.

The two U.S. officials said Russia had also stationed artillery that appeared to be arrayed defensively to protect Russian personnel stationed there.

Reuters has previously reported that Russia had deployed about 200 naval infantry soldiers to the airfield, as well as temporary housing units, a portable air traffic control station and components for an air defense system.

In a sign of the pace of Russia's buildup, Moscow has been sending about two military cargo flights a day to the airfield over the past week, U.S. officials say.

A diplomatic source, speaking to Reuters in the region on condition of anonymity, said the Russians were working to improve the airfield."There have been trucks going in and out. It appears the runway is not suited to some types of aircraft yet and they have been doing some improvements," the diplomat said.

Russia has said it will continue providing military supplies to Syria and that its assistance to the Syrian army is in line with international law.

The United States is using Syrian airspace to lead a campaign of air strikes against Islamic State. A greater Russian presence raises the prospect of the Cold War superpower foes encountering each other on the battlefield.

So far, Russia has not sent combat aircraft or helicopter gunships to the airfield, the Pentagon said.

Both Moscow and Washington say their enemy is Islamic State, whose Islamist fighters control large parts of Syria and Iraq. But Russia supports the government of Assad in Syria, while the United States says his presence makes the situation worse.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Air Force One that any Russian support to Assad would be "destabilizing and counterproductive." But the White House appeared to hold out hope for some degree of cooperation with Moscow, noting shared concerns about violent extremism.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Russia's ultimate goal in Syria remained uncertain.

"Clearly, they are providing more assistance," Kirby said. "But the ultimate goal? The ultimate intent here? I think there's still a degree of opaqueness about that."

The Syrian civil war, in which about 250,000 people have died, has caused nearly half of Syria's prewar population of 23 million to flee, with many thousands attempting to reach Europe.

Russian troops join combat in Syria

Russian forces have begun participating in military operations in Syria in support of government troops, three Lebanese sources familiar with the political and military situation there said on Wednesday.

The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what U.S. officials say appears to be a new military buildup by Moscow, one of President Bashar al-Assad's main allies, though one of the sources said the numbers of Russians involved so far were small.

Two U.S. officials said Russia has sent two tank landing ships and additional aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and has deployed a small number of naval infantry forces.

The U.S. officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia's military moves in Syria remained unclear. One of the officials said initial indications suggested the focus was on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, an Assad stronghold.

The moves come at a time when forces of Assad's government have faced major setbacks on the battlefield in a four-year-old multi-sided civil war that has killed 250,000 people and driven half of Syria's 23 million people from their homes.

Syrian troops pulled out of a major air base on Wednesday, and a monitoring group said this meant government soldiers were no longer present at all in Idlib province, most of which slipped from government control earlier this year.

Moscow confirmed it had "experts" on the ground.

But Russia has declined to comment on the exact scale and scope of its military presence in Syria. Damascus denied Russians were involved in combat, but a Syrian official said the presence of experts had increased in the past year.

Officials in the United States, which is fighting an air war against the Islamist militant group Islamic State in Syria and also opposes Assad's government, have said in recent days that they suspect Russia is reinforcing to aid Assad.

Washington has put pressure on countries nearby to deny their air space to Russian flights, a move Moscow denounced on Wednesday as "international boorishness".

Moscow's only naval base in the Mediterranean is at Tartous on the Syrian coast in territory held by Assad, and keeping it secure would be an important strategic objective for the Kremlin.

Two of the Lebanese sources said the Russians were establishing two bases in Syria, one near the coast and one further inland which would be an operations base.

"The Russians are no longer just advisors," one of them said. "The Russians have decided to join the war against terrorism."

Another of the Lebanese sources said that so far any Russian combat role was still small: "They have started in small numbers, but the bigger force did not yet take part ... There are numbers of Russians taking part in Syria but they did not yet join the fight against terrorism strongly."

The Syrian official said: "Russian experts are always present but in the last year they have been present to a greater degree."

Reflecting Western concern, Germany's foreign minister warned Russia against increased military intervention in Syria, saying the Iran nuclear deal and new U.N. initiatives offered a starting point for a political solution to the conflict.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said reports of growing Russian military activity in Syria were a cause for concern, while France said it made finding a political solution to the crisis more complicated.

Thus far in the war, Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah have the main sources of military support for Assad, but momentum turned against him earlier this year.

In the latest major battlefield setback, state television reported government troops had surrendered an air base in northwestern Syria to a rebel alliance after nearly two years under siege.

The loss of the base meant the last government troops had now withdrawn altogether from central Idlib province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that monitors the conflict.

Coalitions of rebels, who range from hardline Sunni Islamists like al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front to more secular nationalists, have made gains in the northwest and southwest of the country. They often fight against both the government and Islamic State fighters who control much of the east of Syria as well as northern Iraq.

Russia says the Syrian government must be incorporated into a shared global fight against Islamic State. The United States and Assad's regional foes see him as part of the problem.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow would consider additional military measures needed for fighting terrorism in Syria if it deemed them necessary.