Even as tensions between the United States and Russia fester, military-to-military contacts remain resilient between the two sides, Reuters reported on Thursday.
US and Russian military officials have been regularly communicating, Reuters quoted US officials as saying, adding that some of the contacts “are helping draw a line on the map that separates US- and Russian-backed forces waging parallel campaigns on Syria’s shrinking battlefields.”
According to the report by Reuters’ Phil Stewart, here is also a telephone hotline linking the former Cold War foes’ air operations centers.
US officials told Reuters that there now are about 10 to 12 calls a day on the hotline, helping keep US and Russian warplanes apart as they support different fighters on the ground.
Reuters was given rare access to the US Air Force’s hotline station, inside the Qatar-based Combined Air Operations Area, last week, including meeting two Russian linguists, both native speakers, who serve as the U.S. interface for conversations with Russian commanders.
While the conversations are not easy, contacts between the two sides have remained resilient, senior US commanders said, according to the report.
“The reality is we’ve worked through some very hard problems and, in general, we have found a way to maintain the deconfliction line (that separates U.S. and Russian areas of operation) and found a way to continue our mission,” the report quoted Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigian, the top U.S. Air Force commander in the Middle East, as saying in an interview.
“We have to negotiate, and sometimes the phone calls are tense. Because for us, this is about protecting ourselves, our coalition partners and destroying the enemy,” Harrigian said, without commenting on the volume of calls.
Tensions rose between the two side four months earlier, when US President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes against a Syrian airfield after an alleged chemical weapons attack.
In June, the US military shot down a Syrian fighter aircraft, the first US downing of a manned jet since 1999.
Source: Reuters
