Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that President\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/a>\u00a0has ordered additional security measures after a\u00a0Syrian<\/a>\u00a0Soviet-era S-200 air defence missile shot down a\u00a0Russian<\/a>\u00a0military plane by mistake, killing 15, in an\u00a0incident last week<\/a>\u00a0that Moscow blames on\u00a0Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has pushed us to adopt adequate response measures directed at boosting the security of Russian troops\u201d in Syria, Shoigu said in a televised statement.<\/p>\n \u201c(Russia will) transfer the modern S-300 air defence system to the Syrian armed forces within two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n Putin and Syrian President\u00a0Bashar al-Assad<\/a>\u00a0discussed the additional measures and delivery of the S-300 system on the phone Monday, the Kremlin said.<\/p>\n The Syrian military has already been trained to use the system, which was set to be sent over in 2013, but was held up “at the request of\u00a0Israel<\/a>,” Shoigu said.<\/p>\n “In regions near Syria over the Mediterranean Sea, there will be radio-electronic suppression of satellite navigation, on-board radar systems and communication systems of military aviation attacking objects on Syrian territory,” he said.<\/p>\n Moscow says Israeli F-16 planes which struck Latakia in western Syria on September 17 later used the landing Russian Il-20 surveillance plane as “cover,” which resulted in the larger Il-20 being hit by a Syrian missile.<\/p>\n The Russian military has said that Israel’s airforce informed its command in Syria via the established de-confliction hotline, but only one minute before the air strikes — and gave the wrong target location.<\/p>\n Because of this, Moscow claims that the Russian airforce could not keep its plane safe.<\/p>\n ‘Fired recklessly’<\/strong><\/p>\n Israel regularly carries out strikes in Syria against Assad’s government, its Lebanese ally\u00a0Hezbollah<\/a>and Iranian targets. An Israeli military delegation travelled to Moscow last week to share information about the incident.<\/p>\n An Israeli official said the information showed that the Russian plane was shot down because Syrian batteries had “fired recklessly, irresponsibly and unprofessionally, long after our planes were no longer there”.<\/p>\n He said the warning time before the strike was “much longer than one minute”.<\/p>\n Russia has apparently not found this convincing.<\/p>\n Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said the incident was caused by “premeditated” actions by Israeli pilots, warning that this will harm relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n “According to information of our military experts, the reason (behind the downing) were premeditated actions by Israeli pilots which certainly cannot but harm our relations,” Peskov told journalists.<\/p>\n The incident was the deadliest case of friendly fire between Syria and its key backer Russia since Moscow’s game-changing 2015 military intervention.<\/p>\n Peskov said the new measures were only to boost the security of its troops in Syria.<\/p>\n “Russia in this case is acting in its interests only, these actions are not directed against third countries, but towards defending our own military,” he said.<\/p>\n Shoigu meanwhile said “we are certain that the realisation of these measures will cool the ‘hot heads’ and will keep them from poorly thought-out actions which threaten our servicemen”.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Israeli army on Monday declined to comment on Moscow’s S-300 delivery.<\/p>\n (AFP)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moscow on Monday announced new security measures to protect its military in Syria, including supplying the Syrian army with a new S-300 air defence system and jamming radars following the downing of a Russian plane last week. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that President\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0has ordered additional security measures after a\u00a0Syrian\u00a0Soviet-era S-200 air defence missile shot down a\u00a0Russian\u00a0military plane by… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}