Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on Russia's policy toward the Middle East.
Articles & Testimony
The system’s familiarity and potentially minimal, nonintegrated deployment mean that U.S. and Israeli pilots have little to fear from Moscow’s announcement.
It may seem strange that Moscow has delivered its S-300 anti-aircraft system to Syria this month. The decision came after the Assad regime accidentally downed a Russian reconnaissance IL-20 plane in northern Syria on Sept. 17 using the less sophisticated S-200. Why give a more advanced version of that weapon to an incompetent ally who just shot down your plane? But for the Kremlin, the delivery is about one thing: assertion of further dominance in Syria. It is a political statement to the West, and everyone else in the region: Russia is here to stay...
