Russian Vice Admiral Oleg Gurinov said the protest was directed at the US-led coalition in Syria over actions by US forces.
Russian troops in Syria have protested what Moscow described as “provocative actions” by US troops also deployed in the country, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported.
TASS cited a senior Russian military official on Friday as saying “provocative” incidents had occurred in Syria’s northeastern province of Hassakeh, where US troops have been deployed for several years and lead a coalition of local Kurdish forces fighting ISIL (ISIS) and its remains.
“Provocative actions on the part of US forces have been noted in Hassakeh province…the Russian side lodged a protest with the coalition,” Russian Vice Admiral Oleg Gurinov, head of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Parties, told reporters. in Syria. BAG.
Gurnivo said U.S. troops had been spotted twice by Russian forces in areas outside their agreed zones of operations, without giving details of the timing.
“During joint Russian-Turkish patrols, the movements of two patrols led by the so-called anti-terrorist coalition were tracked along the non-deconflict routes near Deiruna-Aga and Saramsak. The Russian side has protested to the coalition,” Gurinov said, according to TASS.
Russia – which conducts joint patrols in northern Syria with Turkey – has agreed on special zones where the US-led coalition can intervene if it takes on hundreds of ISIL fighters encamped in desolate areas of Syria where neither the coalition nor the Syrian army exercises full control.
The US-led coalition has been active in Syria for nearly eight years, while Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, tipping the balance in President Bashar Al-Assad’s favor. Moscow has since expanded its military facilities in Syria with a permanent air and naval base.
Last week, the US launched multiple airstrikes in Syria against what it says were armed groups targeting Iran, which the Pentagon blamed for an earlier drone strike. US officials said the attack by the armed group killed one US military contractor, wounded another and wounded about a dozen US soldiers at a coalition base in the northeast of the country near the town of Hassakeh.
Pro-Iranian forces in Syria warned in an online statement signed by the Iranian Advisory Committee in Syria that they would respond to US airstrikes on their positions.
US military officials announced Friday that the deployment of the George HW Bush aircraft carrier group would be extended after the drone strike by the Iranian-backed groups.
The decision likely means that the US strike group and its more than 5,000 US personnel, currently in the operational area of the European command, will not return to home port as planned.
“The expansion of the George HW Bush Carrier Strike Group, including the USS Leyte Gulf, the USS Delbert D. Black and the USNS Arctic, provides opportunities to further enhance CENTCOM’s capabilities to respond to a range of contingencies in the Middle East. to reinforce. East,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Colonel Joe Buccino said in a statement.
News of the extended deployment first emerged a day after the Pentagon doubled the number of US troops injured in the drone strike in Syria to 12.
The Pentagon estimated that eight people were killed in the US’s retaliatory strikes against targets it believes are linked to Iran.
Both the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministries denounced US airstrikes that Washington said targeted the strategic region of Deir ez-Zor, bordering Iraq.
In a statement last week, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the US “terrorist” attacks hit civilian targets and violated international law and Syrian sovereignty.
“The US claims to be present in Syria to fight Daesh [ISIL] which itself played a major role in its creation is just an excuse to continue the occupation and plunder Syria’s national wealth, including its energy resources and wheat,” he said.
Kanani also said that Iran only has military advisers on the ground in Syria at the request of its government.
The Syrian foreign ministry criticized the “brutal” US attacks that it said killed several people and amounted to a violation of territorial integrity, and pledged to “end the US occupation”.
The White House has said the attacks on its forces will not force a US withdrawal from Syria.