Eh, everyone got what they needed here (except for the poor pilots, of course.) Russia got to show that hey don’t give a f-ck. Turkey got to show that they don’t really care if Russia gives a f-ck or not. Now everyone will make heavy handed statements until the next news cycle, after which everyone can settle back into the same pattern confident that they’ve shown each other where they stand and have gone through the motions appropriately.
Oh, Crimea River!
What the heck is with the attitude that this is some meaningless blip? You realize that there are still people Russia wants to bomb at the Turkish-Syria border? Turkey still wants these people to depose Russia’s buddy? Putin is going to lose some serious shine off his bare-chested chessmaster image? I’m not saying armeggedon is nigh but being blasé about this is pretty weird. It’s not like there’s some proven track record that NATO shooting down Russian planes has been fine in the past.
On the contrary, I suspect that Russia will double down on attacking Syrian Turkmen villages near the Syria / Turkish border, and also potentially move some SAM batteries near by and make sure they have Su-35’s in the area when doing bombing runs.
Its a very dangerous game of chicken, but I don’t think Putin is going to back down because of the loss of one plane.
Getting shot down is a predicable result of flying warplanes over some else’s air space. Poeple do it all the time anyway, and now and then someone gets shot down and everyone has to play “international incident” for a while.
The larger conflict is still a huge problem, of course. And now that these two parties have made a show of pushing their boundaries (and defending them), they can get back to concentrating on the proxy warfare.
An incident like this was bound to happen. I expect there will be another. Not necessarily an aircraft downing, but some Russian element firing on some Turkish element, or vice-versa. It’s a smallish war, they’re on different sides, people are going to get shot.
At least the Turks didnt shoot down a civilian airplane.
Oh, yes. That dreary thing. Ho hum. Isn’t there an Olympics soon to take that off the news cycle too?
The Turks have been playing the Empire Game for a lot longer than the Russians.
I wouldn’t be buying concert tickets for Moscow or St.Petersburg anytime soon.
Proxy warfare is sadly a messy enterprise.
Not really. Keivan Rus was at its height in the 11th century with a pretty decent Empire. The Ottomans didn’t get started until 1299. (Counting the Ottomans as a continuation of the Byzantine empire is cheating in my opinion…)
I would be very surprised if war were to break out over this. From now Russia will be extra careful in going close to Turkish border.
Russia is playing a dangerous game, getting involved in a war, backing and propping one side and getting close to another nation that backs the opposite of the war.
Russia does not belong there in the first place.
Not until the Summer.
Russian forces were invited into Syria by Assad who for the moment is still the UN recognised government of Syria.
Out of all the foreign powers striking Syria for their own purposes, according to International Law Russia has the most justification to be there.
Speaking of Crimea there is this. Tatars and Ukrainian nationalists have blocked power but not allowing engineers to fix pylons that take gas and electricity to Crimea. They do allow the ones serving Ukraine to be fixed.
As a result of the annexed peninsula is in the dark. Ukraine is also not allowing cargo and supply trucks from going to Crimea.
Russia has warned of cutting gas to Ukraine as a result.
First it’s the Tatars, now the Turkomans. The Russian genius is can’t catch a break. I wonder how it’s working out for Crimean people, you know that whole become part of Russia situation?
True but it is a recognized government that is responsible for causing this whole fiasco and bombing it’s own citizens.
Russia phucked up by going into Syria. Turkey has a track record of downing unwelcome jets in it’s air space and has warned Russia before. There is no ISIS in that part of Syria, why was Russia there?
Now those rebels being bombed by Russia had the chance to kill those same Russians, can’t blame them.
How would Russia move SAMs to the area? I wasn’t aware they had any ground forces in the area to operate a SAM.
They don’t. In addition, the region near the border isn’t exactly friendly to Syrian regular forces or Russians, so there isn’t really any way they would be able to do this short of massive victories. But reality is beside the point in these discussions where emotion rules. The Big Russia Bear is pissed, so anything is possible I suppose. :eek:
This article from September says they were on the way and initial installation had occured
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/11/us-mideast-crisis-syria-arms-idUSKCN0RB1Q020150911
I can’t find specifics on how effective it is, but it looks to be the real deal. Almost certainly a threat to Turkish F-16s and it has a range of 400 miles.
And should they launch and hit a Turkish plane over Turkish airspace, or worse, accidently down a US plane, one has to ask how does that improve Putin’s chances for success in Syria?
I think Putin is sending in the ship to intimidate the Turks, but presume he’d be mightly reluctant to fire one for the simple fact that a miscalculation (re: above) could cause things to spin out of control. Guns of August and all that…