Knowledgeable sources build account of Russian involvement in disastrous pro-Assad attack in eastern Syria
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Reports from multiple sources indicate that about 300 fighters with a Russian “private military company” were killed or injured in eastern Syria by US airstrikes last week.
“Three sources familiar with the matter” reported the losses from Deir ez-Zor Province, after the US intervened when pro-Assad units attacked the American-supported, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces east of the Euphrates River. The pro-Assad assault was seeking to take control of a Conoco gas plant.
A Russian military doctor said about 100 had been killed. A “source who knows several of the fighters” said the death toll was more than 80.
“Five sources familiar with the matter” confirmed claims of treatment of the wounded in four military hospitals in Russia.
Just after the three-hour battle on February 8, a US official said about 100 fighters were killed, and a Russian analyst covering PMCs estimated 20 to 20 Russian deaths. Earlier this week, other Russian sources spoke of up to 200 casualties among the PMC, reported to be the Wagner Group, which has been involved in Syrian fighting since at least 2013. Relatives and colleagues identified six of the slain men by name.
See Syria Daily, Feb 13: Russian Troops Among Pro-Assad Forces Killed by US Airstrikes
How to Defend Russia’s “Private Military Companies” in Syria? Write a Song.
Until earlier this week, the Kremlin denied any knowledge of Russians involved in the confrontation. After the claims of up to 200 Russian casualties, Foreign Secretary Maria Zakharova shifted line, saying that the reports were propapaganda from “Russian opponents” but acknowledging reports that five “Russian citizens” had been slain.
“Planeloads” of Casualties; Hospitals Filled with Injured
But the doctor, who works in a Moscow military hospital has been treating the wounded, said more than 50 fighters are hospitalized, 30% of them with serious injured. He said at least three planeloads of the casualties were flown to Moscow between last Friday and Monday morning, on specially equipped military cargo planes which can each accommodate two or three intensive care cases and several dozen less severely wounded patients.
He added that a fellow doctor, who flew to Syria on one of the evacuation flights, said about 100 Russian PMC members had been killed and 200 injured.
Yevgeny Shabayev, leader of a local chapter of a paramilitary Cossack organization which has supplied some of the PMC fighters, said visited injured acquaintances on Wednesday at the Defense Ministry’s Central Hospital in Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow.
Matching US reports of an attacking force of 500 personnel, he sid the wounded men described two PMC units with about 550 fighters. The men said only about 200 were uninjured.
Shabayev said the ward that he visited had eight patients, all recently evacuated from Syria, with many more in other wards in the hospital.
A source with ties to the Wagner Group, after speaking to fighter who took part in the Deir ez-Zor operation, said he was told that more than 80 Russian contractors were killed. He said the total of about 300 killed or injured was a reliable estimate.
“The prognosis for most of the wounded is dismal,” he said.
The other military hospitals treating the fighters are the Third Vishnevskiy hospital in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow; the Burdenko hospital near Moscow city center; and the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg.
Cossack leader Shabayev said casualties were high because the attacking force had no air cover.
Relaying accounts from the wounded, he said, “First of all the bombers attacked, and then they cleaned up using Apaches [attack helicopters].”
A source with ties to the Wagner Group said said the force had advanced toward the village of Khusham, near the Conoco gas plant and within 5 km (3 miles) of the US-supported SDF positions. The aim was to test if the US-led coalition would react.
He explained that the SDF, under a deconfliction agreement with Russia, warned that they were preparing to strike.. However, “the warning was 20 minutes beforehand, in that time it was not feasible to turn the column around”.
The source claimed that, once the strikes began, the contractors did not return fire because they believed that would provoke even more US airstrikes.
Analyst Neil Hauer says PMC fighters are demoralized:
Two Chechen-language audio recordings are circulating on WhatsApp, from a Chechen member of Wagner. He's at Hmeimim airbase and his message is "whatever you do, don't come here [to Syria]. It's not what they say. We are getting f***ing slaughtered, every day." His words.
— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) February 15, 2018
Tillerson: “Productive and Open” Meeting With Turkey’s Erdoğan — But Ankara Demands Withdrawal of Kurdish Militia from Syria
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has proclaimed a three-hour “productive and open” discussion with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after Ankara again demanded the withdrawal of US-backed, Kurdish-led forces from northern Syria.
A State Department spokesman on the trip relayed Tillerson’s declaration, “The two engaged in a productive and open conversation about a mutually beneficial way forward in the US-Turkey relationship.”
The Turks were far less effusive about the conversation. Erdoğan was unsmiling in the official photograph with his visitor, and a Turkish official source said the President had “clearly” told Tillerson about Turkey’s priorities and expectations from the US.
Ankara set up the encounter with the demand that the US expel the Kurdish militia YPG, which leads the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces, from the area near the Turkish border.
“We demanded this relationship be ended, I mean we want them to end all the support given to the Syrian arm of [the Turkish Kurdish insurgency] PKK, the YPG,” Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli told reporters in Brussels, a day after meeting US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “We demanded this structure be removed from SDF.”
Canikli said that Mattis told him the US is working on a plan to retrieve weapons given to the YPG. But Tillerson insisted Washington has “never given heavy arms” to the YPG so there is “nothing to take back”.
The Defense Minister said Mattis had declared that the YPG can be separated from the PKK and “even try to make them fight” the Turkish organization.
Canikli sharply rejected the suggestion:
They share the same goal and are controlled from the same place….
We pointed out that U.S. support for YPG terrorists strengthens PKK terrorists, which constitutes a national security threat for Turkey. We conveyed our determination and expectations from the U.S. to cut all of its links with the YPG and remove them from the ranks of the SDF.
Tillerson is meeting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Friday morning.
