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What Turkey, Syria and Russia said on 15 January 2018
Summary
A look back at a day of sharp rhetoric over a US-backed Syrian border force, and at a Russian air-defence move in Crimea two days earlier.
What did a planned US-backed force in Syria provoke on 15 January 2018? Threats from Ankara and Damascus, and a harsh verdict from Moscow.
On that day, Turkey threatened to "strangle" the United States-backed Syrian Border Security Force "before it's even born". Syria 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, reported at the time as part of the Syrian Civil War, placed three governments in open opposition to the planned force within a single day.
Air defence in Crimea
Two days earlier, on 13 January 2018, Russia deployed a second anti-air S-400 missile battalion in Crimea. The peninsula is part of Ukraine; Russia invaded it in February and March 2014 and annexed it after an illegitimate referendum, amid the uncertainty that followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity. That invasion marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The S-400 deployment added to Russia's military build-up on the occupied peninsula, which is why it drew attention in Kyiv and among Ukraine's neighbours.
Taken together, the two items show Russian military and diplomatic activity on two fronts in the same week: a battalion of air-defence missiles on Ukrainian territory it had annexed, and a public stand against American plans in Syria.
