In an impressive military operation on Thursday that thumbed a nose at US and Russian nuclear arsenals, Israel’s armed forces hit the Kremlin’s main air base in the Middle East with a devastating missile strike, almost certainly without asking permission from anyone inside the Beltway first.
At least 30 Israeli naval missiles smashed into the Russian air base at Khmeimim near the Syrian port city Latakia during the early hours, probably targeting cargo storage facilities there, according to a report by the military analytical group defence.arabic.com.
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The Beruit-based media group Al-Modon reported “huge explosions” at an ammunition depot inside the Russian base, with some sources saying the attacking weapons were drones not missiles.
The raid was almost certainly Israel’s first-ever conventional strike against the notorious airfield which has been operated and effectively owned by Russia since from early on at the start of its operations in Syria.
In 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria President Bashar Al-Assad agreed Moscow’s military could deploy rent-free to the site and were granted a permanent lease. Since then, the IDF may have carried out isolated attacks on it and on Russian service personnel there with drones, local news reports said, but never with dozens of missiles carrying powerful warheads.
The base is the Russian Air Force’s main hub for its Middle East combat operations. According to Moscow-controlled media it is protected by state-of-the-art Russian air defense systems including the S-400 heavy anti-aircraft missile.
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Local media citing video and audio recordings of the attack indicated the Israeli missiles arrived in two waves, penetrating the Russian defensive umbrella and setting off powerful explosions inside the airfield perimeter.
Video geolocated to the Latakia region and published on Syrian and Lebanese social media showed images and audio of munitions exploding and artillery rockets flying haphazardly into the night sky following apparent detonation of stored ammunition.
Intermittent, deeper thud-like explosions typical of bomb or missile impacts were also clearly recorded, followed by powerful flashes lighting up the horizon. The pro-Russian milblogger FighterBomber said pilots managed to get aircraft into the air before the missiles arrived, and there were no early reports of Russian casualties.
Regional news platforms widely cited an X account post by analyst Abdullah Al-Mousa suggesting the Israeli strike against Khmeimim followed the arrival of an Iranian 747 cargo aircraft loaded with weapons or ammunition.
“Israel… launched the attack about an hour after the Iranian Fars Air airplane landed. Interestingly, the strike selectively avoided the runways and towers of Latakia airport, and 30 missiles were launched at 3:55 a.m. from warships. Following the Israeli bombardment, a Russian air patrol was observed over Latakia,” Al-Mousa said.
Most major Ukrainian news platforms reported that Israel had hit the Russian base and damaged Iranian-sourced military materiel stored inside.
Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian homes and cities, which began in the fall of 2022, typically involves 100 or more missiles of all types every month along with similar numbers of kamikaze drones being dispatched nightly.
Russia imports both ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones from Iran, which it has launched against Ukraine. This September saw the most intense Shahed drone campaign of the entire war, with Ukrainian authorities counting more than 1,300 of the Iranian-designed kamikaze drones being launched in the month.
On the night of Oct. 2-3, Russians launched 105 Shahed drones at targets across Ukraine according to Ukraine’s air force, triggering air raid alerts and nighttime evacuations. Air defense networks reported the Shaheds took off from sites long since identified in Russia’s Orel, Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Kursk regions, and from Cape Chauda in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.
Ukrainian air defenses claimed 78 drones were shot down. A Kyiv Post reporter observed automatic cannon shooting at drones flying above the capital. Ukraine said on Thursday that 23 of the 25 drones not blasted out of the sky were “lost” and failed to hit any targets, with at least one flying into Belarusian air space.
Ukrainian military analysts say typically only about half of the kamikaze drones, which carry a 50-kilogram (110-pound) explosive warhead actually hit targets because of jammers and GPS spoofers on the ground disrupting their navigation systems.
Aside from more than 100 kamikaze drones, Russia launched dozens of inaccurate aerial-delivered glider bomb strikes on the same night, dropped in pairs beyond the range of Ukrainian air defenses. One such bomb hit an apartment building in the northern city of Kharkiv, injuring 12 civilians including a three-year-old girl.
The Ukrainian public struggles to understand why the US sends weapons and its own navy to defend Israel against Iranian drones and missiles, which Jerusalem is free to use as it sees fit, while DC officials argue that if they were to intervene directly to protect Ukraine against the same Iranian weapons, that would be against US interests.
“Ukraine, as a sovereign state, can make its own decisions about striking targets in Russia with its own weapons,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a Wednesday press briefing. But, he added, the US needs to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia.
Russian state media says Western support for Ukraine is illegal and is led by the US, whose leaders want to destroy Russia.
There was no immediate response to a Kyiv Post request sent to the US State Department requesting comment with respect to the Israeli strike in Syria.
The popular, pro-Ukraine military Ukraine Battle Map group griped on Sept. 28: “While Israel is allowed by the US to bomb anything in the Middle East using (state-of-the-art) F-35 fighter jets, Ukraine is not allowed to hit military targets in Russia with long-range missiles, and only has five F-16s after 2.5 years of war with Russia.”
The satirical Odesa-Satira chat group said of recent Iranian missile strikes on Israel: “There were 181 missiles fired and the US shot down 10 percent of them. That’s the most important thing… we have been bombarded like this, for the last 3 years, and [received] no help.”
Among recent images lampooning US support to Ukraine popping up on Ukrainian social media is a cartoon (see below) that shows an American soldier blocking incoming missiles and bombs from hitting a sleeping Israeli child. The next frame shows the same American soldier watching from the side passively saying, “We pray for you,” as bombs and missiles fly unimpeded at a sleeping Ukrainian child,
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