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What Moscow and Ankara signalled on 15 January 2018
Summary
A look back at a day of threats over a planned Syrian border force and a reported Russian air-defence build-up in Crimea.
What did the security picture around Ukraine and its neighbours look like on 15 January 2018? Two separate developments, one in Syria and one in Crimea, showed Russia's military reach and the tensions around it.
Threats over a Syrian border force
On 15 January 2018, Turkey threatened to "strangle" the United States-backed Syrian Border Security Force "before it's even born". Syria, for its part, vowed to crush the force and to expel American military personnel from the country. Russia called the plans "a plot to dismember Syria".
The statements came from three governments, each with its own stake in the Syrian civil war, and each aimed at the same planned force.
S-400 deployment in Crimea
Two days earlier, on 13 January 2018, Russia deployed a second S-400 anti-air missile battalion in Crimea, as reported at the time. The peninsula is Ukrainian territory that Russia invaded and occupied in February and March 2014 and then annexed after an illegitimate referendum. The annexation took place amid the uncertainty that followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity and marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The new battalion added to the air-defence systems Russia had placed on the occupied peninsula.
Why the two stories sat together
The reports concerned different theatres, but both involved Russia asserting its position: through diplomatic condemnation of a US-backed project in Syria, and through further military deployment in occupied Crimea.
