Russian BSF Marine Brigade landing
The Kremlin pointedly disclosed Saturday, June 8, that President Vladimir Putin had talked by phone to Binyamin Netanyahu Friday on the Syrian question. It was their third conversation in a month. In his first call on May 6, Putin administered a dressing down to Netanyahu who was visiting Shanghai on Israel’s air strike against Damascus the day before. On June 14th, the prime minister flew to Sochi for an abortive attempt to dissuade the Russian president from consigning advanced S-300 missiles to the Syrian army.
There was no comment from Jerusalem on this latest conversation. However, the frequent communications between the Russian and Israeli leaders speak volumes about who calls the shots for the Syrian war arena – and the wider Middle East as well – since the Obama administration opted out. It also demonstrated that Putin is not giving up on the deployment of Russian troops on the Golan, despite the UN veto on their stepping into the shoes of the departing 377 Austrian members of the UN force policing the Golan separation zone between Israel and Syria.
Hoping to circumvent this veto, Putin turned for clearance directly to Jerusalem, one of the two parties to the 1974 disengagement agreement. No details of their conversation have been released.
Ever the opportunist, the Russian leader decided to take advantage of the exaggerated Israeli reporting of “heavy fighting” on June 5 between Syrian and rebel troops over the Quneitra crossing, as his fulcrum for generating a crisis around the divided enclave. Our military sources report that the Quneitra battle was nothing more than the brief seizure of the Golan crossing by a small group of Syrian rebels while Syrian troops were asleep. They were soon chased away by three Syrian tanks. Clouds of black smoke from fires ignited by Syrian shots filled TV screens for hours, giving Putin his answer for countering the arrival in Jordan last week of 1,000 American Marines (disclosed exclusively by DEBKAfile on June 5), US Patriot missile interceptors and F-16 fighters, for deployment on the Syrian border.
