– Russia has shipped a battery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from Syria to a Russian port close to Crimea, in keeping with an Israeli satellite tv for pc imaging firm, in an obvious try and bolster its air defences within the battle with Ukraine.
ImageSat Worldwide (ISI) captured photos exhibiting the presence of the S-300 anti-aircraft battery at Masyaf, Syria in April, and the empty website left behind on Aug. 25 after the hardware was shipped to the port of Tartus.
Separate photos confirmed the battery parts on a dock at Tartus between Aug. 12 and 17. By Aug. 20 they'd gone, and ISI concluded they'd been transferred to a Russian vessel, the Sparta II, which left Tartus for the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
Knowledge from Refinitiv Eikon present the Sparta II is presently in Novorossiysk, having arrived by way of Turkey’s Dardanelles Strait.
The Russian defence ministry declined to remark.
Russia has maintained a army presence in Syria since 2015, when it intervened within the civil battle there on the aspect of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
If confirmed, the switch would point out a major Russian transfer to bolster air defences close to the theatre of battle in Ukraine, the place its forces have sustained damaging assaults in current weeks.
In a single such incident, eight Russian fight planes had been destroyed this month in a collection of explosions at an airbase in Crimea. Ukraine has declined to say whether or not and the way it carried out the assaults.
ISI photos confirmed the radar element of the S-300 battery had been moved individually from the identical Masyaf base to the Khmeimim air base on the Syrian coast, north of Tartus.
The corporate’s analysts mentioned they assessed that the dimensions and weight of the radar made it unsuitable for cargo by sea, and will require an airlift by an Ilyushin-76 plane from Khmeimim again to Russia.
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