Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo / AP
Russia waded deeper into Syria's civil war yesterday, striking rebel positions far from Isis strongholds for a second day and leaving little doubt that the immediate target of the intervention is to secure President Bashar al-Assad's hold on power.
The expanding Russian involvement in Syria threatened to further complicate efforts to secure a negotiated settlement of the four-year war at a time when the influx of refugees into Europe and the endurance of Isis (Islamic State) is focusing world attention on Syria's unrelenting bloodshed.
Amid indications more Russian troops and military hardware may be heading to Syria, it remained unclear how far Russia was prepared to go in support of its quest to spearhead a Russian-led solution to the war.
The latest attacks came as Russian officials extended an olive branch to moderate rebels fighting the Syrian Government and said they could be included in Moscow's plans for an eventual peace settlement.
Speaking at a news conference in New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said "the Free Syrian Army should be part of the political process".
The comment seemed at odds with airstrikes on one of the few areas where moderate rebels still have a foothold and from which Isis was ejected more than 18 months ago.
Yesterday's attacks focused on a strategically vital belt of territory in the provinces of Idlib, Hama and Homs where steady rebel gains in recent months have threatened the Government's link between the capital, Damascus, and the Assad family's coastal heartland of Latakia.
The nearest Isis-controlled territory is more than 160km away.
Some of the towns struck are strongholds of recently formed coalition Jaish al-Fatah, or Army of Conquest, which includes the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra with an assortment of Islamist and moderate factions.
One strike hit the outskirts of Kafr Nabl, a town that has won renown as a symbol of the peaceful protest movement against Assad family rule.
The local council there receives US assistance, and the local rebels have received support under a covert CIA programme aimed at bolstering moderate rebels.
The strike hit a training camp for a US-vetted group called Suqour al-Jabal beside Roman remains on the outskirts of the town, according to activists in the area.
Raed Fares, a leader of the protest movement in Kafr Nabl, said the explosion was bigger than anything local residents had seen in three years of airstrikes by Syrian warplanes.
"It was like a nuclear bomb," he said.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook reiterated the US view that the Russian planes "do not appear to be hitting targets in areas where Isis is operating".
"We have encouraged them, once again, to focus their attention on Isis," he said.
Russian officials insisted Isis was the main target of the air attacks.
But they also acknowledged that Jabhat al-Nusra "and other terrorist groups" were being included in the strikes, according to Lavrov.
"If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it's a terrorist," Lavrov told journalists in New York.
He added that Russia did not consider the Free Syrian Army a terrorist group, and said the participation of moderate rebels in any peace process was "absolutely necessary".
In Moscow, however, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov questioned whether the Free Syrian Army existed, underscoring the gulf in perceptions of the anti-Assad rebellion between Russia and the US, which has given limited support to moderate rebels in their quest to unseat the Assad regime.
"Is there a Free Syrian Army? Does it still exist?
"Have not the majority of its fighters switched sides and joined [Isis]?" he said when asked whether Russia considered the Free Syrian Army a terrorist group.
The comment was certain to deepen suspicions by Washington and its allies that Russian President Vladimir Putin's short-term aim is to give more breathing space to Assad, whose depleted and wearied forces have been losing ground to the rebels in both southern and northern Syria.
The location of the strikes suggests the Russians' immediate priority is to safeguard Syrian Government communication lines between Damascus and the coast, where Russian troops are operating out of an expanded air base not far from Assad's home town of Qurdaha, military analysts said.
A spokesman for Russia's Defence Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said warplanes had hit a dozen Isis sites in the previous 24 hours, destroying targets including a command centre and two arms depots.
He told journalists in Moscow that Russia had deployed 50 warplanes and helicopters to the expanded Bassel al-Assad International Airport outside the coastal city of Latakia.
It was the first official indication by the Russians of the size of their military intervention.
The strikes themselves may not make a significant military difference to a battlefield that has remained largely stalemated for the past two years, with neither the rebels nor the Government capable of delivering a decisive blow.
But with the Russian military build-up continuing, it remains unclear precisely what Russian intentions are, said Jeff White, a military analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Russian and Syrian news reports said more troops were heading for the Syrian coasts, including Marines, airborne troops and special forces.
A report on the official Syrian news agency Sana said amphibious landing craft were also expected to arrive within the coming days.
"What the Russians are doing is saying, what is the priority threat to the regime, and they are dealing with that," said White. "At some point they might get around to hitting Isis. But at the moment it's about the threat, not the group, and they want to deal with the threat to the regime."
The targeting also seemed to diminish any imminent hope that Russia would win wider support for its vision of a peace settlement in Syria, central to which is the creation of an anti-Isis coalition that will include Syria and Iran and which Russia is urging the US to join.
The Syrian Opposition said it would not countenance peace talks brokered by Moscow that appeared aimed at propping up Assad and urged the Security Council to take action to stop the Russian bombing.
Syrian opposition figures, and some Free Syrian Army units, engaged in discussions with Russian officials over the summer over possible ways to end the war, said Monzer Akbik, a senior official with the coalition.
But the strikes suggested a different goal, he said: to bomb Syrian rebels into submission.
"What the Russians are trying to do is threaten the Syrian people that they are able to help Assad defeat you, to pressure the Syrians into accepting Assad to remain in power," he said.
"This is not going to happen. They will refuse to engage according to these terms."
As the Russian military started airstrikes in Syria, another important national institution applauded the intervention.
This week, a statement from the Russian Orthodox Church praised the Russian war effort, describing the mission to fight the jihadists of Isis (Islamic State) as a "holy battle".
"The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it," said the head of the church's public affairs department, Vsevolod Chaplin.
"This decision corresponds with international law, the mentality of our people and the special role that our country has always played in the Middle East."
Strategists in the Kremlin are probably not donning the vestments of Crusaders right now. The airstrikes are probably an opportunistic gamble by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a move rooted more in cynicism than religious conviction. And senior Muslim clerics in Russia have also endorsed Moscow's new war.
But Putin has anchored his political brand in religious nationalism, centred on the Russian Orthodox Church, which has become a major pillar in the Russian nation-state after decades of Soviet suppression.
It is a key agent in spreading Putin-friendly patriotic propaganda, from anti-gay proselytising to backing a more muscular foreign policy.
Putin has invoked the history of the Russian Orthodox Church as a justification for Russia's annexation of Crimea, the Black Sea territory it seized from Ukraine last year.
Crimea is where, in the 10th century, one of the first great Slavic princes is said to have shed his pagan beliefs for the Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine Empire.
This worldview, as Chaplin indicated, extends south into the Middle East. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Russian Orthodox Church has been outspoken about the need to protect the region's Christians and lent aid to its remaining, beleaguered patriarchates.
The Middle East's Christians, said a Patriarchate of Moscow spokesman in 2013, "have known for centuries that no other country would look after their interests the way Russia would".
This is a debatable claim, but taps into a real history. For decades, Russia's czars coveted lands then ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and framed their imperial ambitions in religious terms.
Beginning with Catherine the Great in the late 18th century, the Russians had framed their own conquests in religious terms: to reclaim Istanbul, once the centre of Orthodox Christianity, and, as one of her favourite court poets put it, "advance through a Crusade" to the Holy Lands and "purify the river Jordan".
This rhetoric so perturbed certain 19th century Western diplomats that they tried to champion another spiritual tradition to counter Russia's dangerous zeal - Islam.
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