Russia suspends Syrian flight safety MOU with US
Gareth Jennings, London - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
13 April 2017
Russia has suspended communications with the United States relating to the operational safety of their respective combat aircraft operating over Syria.
The suspension, which was announced by the Kremlin on 8 April, followed the US cruise missile strike on Sharyat airbase the day before, after it was implicated in a chemical weapons attack earlier in the week.
"The US military attaché in Moscow was summoned to the Ministry of Defence to get an official note, which said the Russian side was suspending … the observance of its obligations under the memorandum of understanding [MOU] on prevention of incidents and ensuring of flight safety in the course of operation in the Syrian Arab Republic," state media reported Ministry of Defence spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov as saying.
The MOU between the US and Russia covers such issues as maintaining professional airmanship, the use of specific communication frequencies, and the establishment of a communication line on the ground, and is designed to protect against unintended conflicts in the skies over Syria, where both parties have been conducting parallel but separate intensive air operations since 30 September 2015.
Although never a fail-safe solution to conflict in the skies over the Syrian theatre - a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 'Fencer' strike aircraft was shot down by a pair of Turkish Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons one month after the MOU was signed on 20 October 2015 - it was nevertheless seen as important to lessening the chances of a wider escalation that might follow such an unintended incident taking place.
Following Moscow's decision to suspend the MOU, Washington responded by saying that it wished to maintain contact to ensure flight safety over Syria. "The Department of Defense maintains the desire for dialogue through the flight safety channel. It is to the benefit of all parties operating in the air over Syria to avoid accidents and miscalculation, and we hope the Russian Ministry of Defence comes to this conclusion as well," a Department of Defense spokesperson said.
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