Russian exporter with ties to the Pentagon sending missile defense systems to Syria

Russia’s main arms exporter announced on Friday it would send advanced missile defense systems to Syria capable of shooting down airplanes or sinking ships in the event of foreign intervention into the Levantine country’s crisis.

“I would like to say these mechanisms are really a good means of defense, a reliable defense against attacks from the air or sea,” Anatoly P. Isaykin, the general director of Rosoboronexport, said.  “This is not a threat, but whoever is planning an attack should think about this."

According to the New York Times, among the weapons to be shipped to Syria are the Pantsyr-S1, a radar-guided missile and artillery system capable of hitting warplanes at altitudes well above those typically flown during bombing sorties, and up to 12 miles away; Buk-M2 antiaircraft missiles, capable of striking airplanes at even higher altitudes, up to 82,000 feet, and at longer ranges; and land-based Bastion antiship missiles that can fire at targets 180 miles from the coast.

Buk-M2 antiaircraft missiles.
Photo: AP

The systems to be shipped are not considered to be top of the line.  Rather, the announcement is another step in the retrenching of tensions between Moscow and Washington. 

The two have been butting heads over the cause and how to handle Syria’s spiral of violence.  The United States accuses Russia of supporting a murderous dictator, President Bashar al-Assad, and condoning his use of violence, while Russia accuses the United States of  pro-rebel bias and military adventurism.  Russia believes NATO and the United States overstepped its mandate during the Libyan war and violated domestic sovereignty. 

There were also reports Moscow was planning on sending an amphibious landing vessel and a small squad of marines to Tartus in Syria to provide security for military instillations and infrastructure. 

Russia is Syria’s biggest arms supplier and maintains its only base outside the former Soviet Union in Tartus. 

Moscow emphasizes the arms sold to Damascus are defensive in nature and are not being used against the opposition.  Isaykin told reporters Moscow has not shipped rifles, ground-to-ground rockets, helicopters and onboard weapons, or armored vehicles—necessities for a civil war—to Syria in over ten years. 

Meanwhile, a United States senator criticized the Department of Defense for granting Rosoboronexport a no-bid contract to provide Afghanistan’s forces with 21 Mi-17 helicopters, valued around $1 billion. 

“I remain deeply troubled that the [Department of Defense] would knowingly do business with a firm that enabled mass atrocities in Syria,” Republican and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee John Cornyn wrote in a letter to DOD secretary Leon Panetta. 

The Pentagon responded that the deal with Rosoboronexport is the “only legally available method” to supply the helicopters to Afghanistan. 

“We understand the concerns,” said Pentagon spokesman George Little.  “We’re not ignoring them.  But I would make the point that, in the case of Afghanistan, the Mi-17 is about giving them what they need and what they can use effectively to take on their own fights inside the country.

The Russian arms exporter was subject to United States sanctions from 2006 to 2010 for allegedly supplying Iran and Syria with equipment that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction.  A United States intelligence report this week also said the firm was supplying Iran with equipment for its disputed missile program.