The Kremlin’s Ministry of Defence confirmed Russia will begin the major naval exercise today involving 25 warships and support vessels and around 30 planes, including fighter jets and strategic bombers.
A Ministry spokesman said: “In the interests of ensuring the safety of shipping and air traffic and in line with international law, the areas of the exercise will be declared dangerous for shipping and flights.”
Russian sources argued the drills are needed because not enough progress has been made in tackling militants in Syria’s Idlib province.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: “This hotbed of terrorists (in Idlib) does really not bode anything good if such inaction continues.
“The situation in Syria has a significant potential to become more complicated and the situation around Idlib leaves a lot to be desired.”
Idlib is the last stronghold of Syria’s rebel forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad and could be the site of a bloody final battle which would bring Syria’s seven-year-long civil war to an end.
The UN have warned that almost three million people who are trapped in Idlib could be caught up in the impending conflict.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said: “We will go all the way in Idlib.”
His comments came after a visit to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday, August 30, before the naval exercises were announced.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said the upcoming naval drills bore no relation to the situation in Syria’s Idlib and had been planned in advance.
But the exercise appears aimed as a warning to the West and UN forces against hitting Syrian government positions with tactical strikes.
In April, the US, UK and France launched over 100 missiles which they say targeted Syrian chemical weapons facilities in retaliation to a chemical weapons attack in Damascus.
Shocking videos from the time of the chemical attack show the devastation caused by sarin gas smoke which killed 80 civilians and drew international condemnation.
Syria’s government denied involvement in a letter to the UN “asserting that Syria has not and will not use toxic gases against its people because it does not have them in the first place”.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem claimed in August that a Syrian volunteer organisation known as the White Helmets had kidnapped 44 children to stage a chemical weapons incident in Idlib and provoke UN strikes on government forces.