Questions continue to swirl around a murky attack on U.S. and allied Syrian forces last week, with both the White House and the Kremlin refusing to enter into a mushrooming controversy over whether Russian mercenaries supporting the Syrian government took part in the assault.
The assault, if verified, would rank as the largest single deadliest battlefield encounter between the two Cold War superpowers since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Pentagon has repeatedly claimed the strike, which reportedly killed an unknown number of fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, was carried out in self-defense, in response to massed Syrian government-backed troops and paramilitary forces advancing on U.S.-backed militias.
However, several news outlets have reported that as many as 100 Russian mercenaries were among those killed in the American airstrikes, a figure the Russian Foreign Ministry has condemned as “classic disinformation.” Officials from the Moscow-based Conflict Intelligence Team, an independent watchdog group monitoring Russian operations in Ukraine and Syria, have identified 12 Russian contractors among those killed in the strike, Radio Free Europe reported Wednesday.
Defense officials in Moscow continue to maintain the airstrike was an unprovoked attack against local forces, while the Assad government characterized the attack as a war crime. American and coalition officials are currently reviewing the chain of events leading up to last week’s airstrike.
“We were told there were no Russians” taking part in the build-up and assault, Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters Tuesday while en route to a NATO ministerial in Brussels. “It’s perplexing. It makes no sense, it does not appear to be anything coordinated” by the Russian military on the ground near the Syrian city of Deir-e-Zour, where the strikes took place.
The Kremlin, which has provided crucial military support to its ally, Mr. Assad, has been equally opaque about what happened.
“We in the Kremlin do not possess detailed information that would enable us to draw conclusions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday. Mr. Peskov refused to rule out that Russians were on the ground near Deir-e-Zour at the time of the regime attack and U.S. counterstrike, but “they are not connected to the armed forces of the Russian Federation.’’
Despite such denials, a large number of injured Russian military contractors are reportedly being treated at military hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to Reuters. Many were tied to the Russian private contracting firm Wagner, which is facing U.S. sanctions for funneling combat contractors into eastern Ukraine in support of pro-Moscow separatist forces there.
The use of private military contractors remains illegal in Russia, while their use has become commonplace in U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11, and has been on the rise during recent American-led operations in the Middle East against Islamic State.
In Syria’s Deir-e-Zour region, U.S. and coalition commanders said they observed a week-long build-up of Syrian government and paramilitary forces near the lines of the U.S.-backed coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, said Air Force Central Command chief Lt. Gen. Jeffery Harrigan.
“Despite the attack being unprovoked, [the assault] was not entirely unexpected,” he told reporters at the Pentagon this week, describing the Syrian assault near SDF positions in Deir-e-Zour. The military buildup of regime troops and militias was observed “well in advance of the enemy forces’ attack,” he added.
Prior to the strike, U.S. commanders reached out to their Russian counterparts via a standing “deconfliction” agreement, to ensure both sides were on the same page before American warplanes struck, Gen. Harrigan said.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon, interviewed the Iraqi Kurdistan network Rudaw TV, stressed that U.S. was prepared to defend itself and its Syrian allies from any attack, but insisted the American forces were in Syria for one purpose — to ensure the defeat of Islamic State.
“We do not have a fight with [Syrian] pro-regime forces,” Col. Dillon said. “Our fight is continued to focus on ISIS.”
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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