Nato chief says prepared to send troops to defend Turkey

Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Russia there were other places Turkey could get natural gas and other countries that could build its first nuclear plant in response to the incursions.

“We can’t accept the current situation. Russia’s explanations on the air space violations are not convincing,” the Turkish daily Sabah and others quoted the Turkish president as telling reporters as he flew to Japan for an official visit.

“We are Russia’s number one natural gas consumer. Losing Turkey would be a serious loss for Russia. If necessary, Turkey can get its natural gas from many different places,” he said.

Ashton Carter, the US defence secretary, condemned the reckless Russian behaviour and warned that Russia could soon start to sustain casualties as it backed a new ground offensive in Syria in support of the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

“They have shot cruise missiles from a ship in the Caspian Sea without warning; they have come within just a few miles of one of our unmanned aerial vehicles,” Mr Carter said.

With Russian and US forces now operating in such close proximity, experienced observers fear there is a growing risk of an accidental showdown between the two.

Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, said there was now a “real danger” of a clash if the two militaries did not start to co-ordinate their actions.

“You can’t really have two air forces fighting different campaigns aimed at different objectives over the same territory without the real risk of a clash,” he told the BBC.

As part of the show of determination to Moscow, Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, announced the UK would station about 100 additional troops in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and would also send 25 soldiers to a training mission in Ukraine.

While the force is small, it could act as a trip wire that would trigger a far wider response if Russia attempted to undermine the country, and could therefore deter any attack.

“We are committed to supporting the sovereignty of the democratic nations of Eastern Europe,” said Mr Fallon. “Now we will have a more regular drumbeat of troops deploying in the Baltics and Poland, and will step up our training effort in Ukraine.”

However, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said the West must “treat Russia properly” and should be addressed as an equal.

The conciliatory remarks are significant as the EU has sanctions on Russia that require unanimity to roll-over in December.

Offensive against rebels launched

Syrian government troops and allied militia backed by Russian air strikes launched an offensive against rebels in the Ghab Plain in western Syria on Thursday, in what senior regime official Lt Gen Ali Abdullah Ayoub described as “wide-ranging attacks to deal with the terrorist groups”.

The assault aims to push an assortment of rebel groups, including the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front and their more moderate Islamist allies, Ahrar al-Sham, out of the high ground that threatens the rear of Latakia, Mr Assad’s coastal heartland.

Rami Abdulrahman, director of the the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters that ground forces were targeting insurgent-held areas with heavy barrages of surface-to-surface missiles, as Russian jets bombed from above.

Damascus and Moscow launched their first major joint assault on Syrian insurgents on Wednesday in nearby areas of Hama province, with Russian warships firing missiles from the Caspian Sea into Syria.

But the offensive had failed to make significant gains. Video footage showed US-backed rebel fighters holding their ground and destroying several regime tanks, apparently marking a rare achievement for the CIA’s covert training programme.

An opposition activist on the ground said that as many as 15 tanks had been destroyed.

Meanwhile on Thursday, a human rights monitoring group said that Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) – the ostensible target of the Russian intervention in Syria – had killed three Assyrian Christian captives who had been among nearly 200 people abducted in northeastern Syria earlier this year.

“Shot at point blank range,” said Diana Yaqco, a representative of A Demand for Action, an Assyrian pressure group. “We hope the next video isn’t a mass execution.”

Russia supports air strikes

Russians overwhelmingly back the Kremlin’s decision to launch air strikes against Isil but are much more ambivalent about the prospects of entering a war on the side of Assad, according to new poll figures.

Seventy-two per cent of Russians said they were “generally positive” or “totally positive” about the country’s air campaign in Syria, according to the first opinion poll since the Kremlin launched air strikes.

Sixty-three per cent also backed French air strikes against the terror group.

The survey, carried out by the Levada Centre, an independent Russian pollster, is in stark contrast to a poll by the same organisation last month that found just 14 per cent of Russian backed military intervention in Syria. In that survey, carried out in mid September, 69 per cent of respondents said they opposed sending Russian forces to Syria to back Assad’s government.

The latest poll, carried out over last weekend, suggests some ambivalence remains about getting involved in Syria.

Less than half (46 per cent) said they approved of the Federation Council’s decision to authorise the use of Russian forces abroad, while only 47 per cent agreed with the statement “Russia should support Bashar Assad in his battle against Islamic State [Isil] and the Syrian opposition.”

A similar number – 46 per cent – said they feared Syria could turn into a repeat of the Soviet Union’s disastrous experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11918541/Russia-must-use-influence-to-protect-civilians-in-Syria-says-Fallon.html