As Western and Turkish military leaders prepare for a
pipe ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels later today over the downing of
a Turkish fighter jet by Syria, a Russian report blames the incident on a
failed NATO spooks operation.
RT, the first Russian 24/7 English-language news
channel that carries the Russian view on global news, writes this
morning:
“The Turkish military jet’s incursion into Syria
may have been a botched NATO operation on counterfeiting Syrian military
aircraft ID in order to fool the country’s air defense. The necessary codes
could have been ‘borrowed’ from the Syrian fighter that had been stolen by its
defector pilot.
“This theory,
explaining why the Turkish reconnaissance plane entered Syrian airspace before
being taken down, was voiced by Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, which cited unnamed sources in the Syrian
security forces.
“Syrians believe the
Friday incident has its roots in last week’s defection of a Syrian pilot who
escaped in his MiG-21 fighter jet to Jordan. Damascus branded the defector a
traitor, while Jordanian authorities gave him asylum.
“The defection brings
memories of a similar incident that took place in February 2011, when two
Libyan pilots ‘delivered’ their military aircraft to Malta. NATO’s bombing
campaign, which ended with the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi’s government,
started just a month later.
“Military analysts note
that, curiously, the Libyan air defense systems appeared to be helpless against
NATO’s airstrikes. The explanation may lie in the friend-or-foe systems that
the two stolen aircraft had onboard, the newspaper suggests. This system is
used by the military in combat to distinguish their own aircraft.
“According to the
newspaper, the Syrian military believe that NATO took a similar approach again,
but failed to properly decipher the codes. This is evident by the fact that the
defector pilot managed to send his family to Turkey before stealing the fighter
jet, which means the act was probably not done out of a sudden emotional
breakdown.
“NATO may have tasked
Turkey to test how well the job was performed, and the result was disastrous,
the report explains.
“This
is only a theory and more trivial explanations cannot be ruled out – but the
intrusion is more likely to have been part of a military operation rather than
the mistake Turkey claims it to be, military experts say.”
