Putin Meets With Heads of Print Media and News Agencies to Discuss Troubling Drone Finds
There are plenty of breaking news. I'm 3 m far from the hall in the editorial office of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper where the President is meeting with heads of Russian print media and news agencies. Now, Putin's words about an attempted UAV attack against the Russian airbase in Khmeimim, Syria, have gone viral.
The UAVs were detected to have taken off from the Idlib de-escalation zone. As we know, Turkey is now responsible for the situation in Idlib. Putin was asked to comment on that.
President Putin: "I spoke with the President of Turkey from an office next door before this meeting. We discussed this situation among other issues. I am sure that neither the Turkish military, nor the Turkish authorities, nor the Turkish state have anything to do with this incident. However, it is true that Turkey should control this part of the Idlib zone. It should be said, though, that we do not always manage to have complete control over what we should control there. Our Turkish partners are sometimes unable to do so either. The situation is complicated there. Under our agreements, they should set up observation posts there, but they have not done this so far.
And it is difficult to do it. You probably remember that when we set up the checkpoints operated by Russian military police, the militants launched an offensive, and they were surrounded. Through well-coordinated, professional and courageous actions by our military on the ground, in the air and by special units, we were able to create a corridor in order to move everyone out of this area without any losses. In Syria, I met with the commander of this unit. By the way, he is from Dagestan, if I am not mistaken. Anyway, he said that the air force delivered a strike unmatched in its effectiveness. So I asked him: What did you do? I raised the Russian flag, he said, and took that corridor, while a convoy of the special forces moved towards them from the opposite side. This does not mean, however, that this was provoked in any way. I am now referring to our Turkish partners. There were provocateurs there, but not Turks. And we know them and who they are. We know how much and whom they paid for this provocation.
As for these incidents, there is nothing good about them. These are also provocations designed to derail the agreements that have been reached. This is the first point. Their second goal was the relations with our partners, Turkey and Iran. It was an attempt to destroy these relations. We are well aware of it, and for this reason, we will show solidarity towards one another. As for these attacks, we have every reason to believe that they were carefully planned, and we know when and where the drones were delivered as well as their number.
I stress that these aerial vehicles were camouflaged as improvised devices. In fact, they clearly include high-technology components. This is related to radio location systems and satellite targeting, as well as high-precision mine dropping systems. That is, the explosives were dropped from the UAVs automatically, and the route presumes that the drones were supposed to return to the launch site. This proves that high-technology elements were used. I fully agree with experts from our General Staff that there was no way these elements were created in an improvised manner.
This is the reality, we see this, and additional measures were taken to secure our locations. I hope that they are effective. We will further strengthen our partnership with Turkey.
The Russian inter-agency group is currently in Damascus to hold talks with the Syrian government and to meet with President Assad. I hope that all these challenging issues will be resolved so that we can move forward".