Moscow has condemned “external forces” seeking to escalate violence in Syria, despite reports from Ukrainian military intelligence that Russia is to send mercenaries to support flagging troops allied to Damascus.
The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova blamed outside actors for instigating a recent sweeping insurgent offensive, after Islamist militants spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took control of the city of Aleppo at the weekend in a shock advance.
Zakharova emphasised Moscow’s support for a counter-attack by Damascus, despite reports that Russia has begun removing ships from its naval base in Tartus. Militia forces spearheaded by HTS are engaged in fierce confrontations with Syrian army forces 50 miles away outside the provincial capital of Hama.
The ministry of defence in Damascus said major reinforcements had been dispatched to Hama city to bolster troops on the frontlines, while insurgents claimed increasing control of towns in the Hama countryside north-west of the city as a second front pushed sound towards Hama.
Fighting also continued in eastern Syria, where forces loyal to Damascus supported by Iranian and Iran-backed militias are fighting Arab-majority rebel militias from the city of Deir Ezzour. The Pentagon said it destroyed rocket launchers, a tank and mortars that presented a “clear and imminent threat” to US and supporting forces near the Euphrates river, the second such pre-emptive strike in the area in under a week.
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has relied heavily on support from Moscow and Tehran as well as Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to keep control of the fractured country, which spiralled rapidly into a proxy-war following a popular uprising against his rule in 2011.
The insurgents’ sudden sweeping takeover of territory in the north-west, which Zakharova described as “an audacious act,” marked the largest challenge to Assad’s rule in years, and the first time in over a decade of civil war in Syria that the entire city of Aleppo is apparently under full opposition control.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) said planned rotations of Russian troops from Syria had been suspended, while morale among Russian military personnel fighting in Syria is low due to the surprise insurgent advance. Both the Syrian army and backup units from Russia have sustained “significant losses”, it said, including what it described as a “chaotic” retreat from their positions as troops left behind military equipment and weapons.
Moscow will bolster forces in Syria using private military companies expected to arrive in Syria, according to HUR. It anticipated these forces are likely to be drawn from Russia’s Africa Corps, a mercenary force that is a rebranded version of the state-funded Wagner group militia.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is expected to meet with his counterparts from Iran and Turkey in Qatar in the coming days for urgent consultations on Syria. Ankara has supported rebel groups in north-western Syria, while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, in a phone call that Damascus should engage in political consultations to end the civil war.
Turkey “is doing its utmost to restore calm in Syria”, he added.
According to a readout from the Kremlin, Putin “stressed the urgent need” to stop the insurgency, advocating for Ankara to play a role in what he termed Damascus’s efforts “to restore stability and constitutional order across the country”.
The head of Syria’s civil defence rescue service, known as the White Helmets, told the UN security council that Russian airstrikes on the rebel-held enclave of Idlib earlier this week had put four hospitals in the city out of service.
“As the map of military control has changed, brutal attacks launched by the Syrian regime, Russia, and Iranian cross-border militias on Syrians have escalated especially in areas outside their control in north-west Syria,” he said. The White Helmets have responded to 275 attacks that killed 100 civilians and wounded 360, he added.
