Russia has sent units of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from Syria to a Russian port near Crimea, according to an Israeli satellite imaging company, in an apparent bid to bolster its air defenses in the war with Ukraine. ImageSat International (ISI) captured images showing the presence of the S-300 anti-aircraft battery in Masyaf, Syria in April, and the empty site left behind on August 25 after the systems were shipped to the port of Tartous. Separate images showed the battery components on a dock in Tartous between August 12 and 17, but by August 20 they were gone. The ISI concluded that they had been transferred to a Russian vessel, the Sparta II, which left Tartous for the Russian port of Novorossiysk. Information from Refinitiv Eikon indicates that the Sparta II is currently in Novorossiysk, having arrived through Turkey’s Dardanelles Strait. The Russian Defense Ministry declined to comment. A 2011 uprising in Syria turned into war after the government responded violently to the country’s protest movement. Russian intervention on the side of the government in 2015 turned the tide of the conflict, with Idlib now the only province largely controlled by the opposition. If confirmed, the transfer of the S-300s would signal a major Russian move to bolster air defenses near the theater of war in Ukraine, where Russian forces have suffered devastating attacks in recent weeks. In one such incident, eight Russian fighter jets were destroyed this month in a series of explosions at an air base in Crimea. Ukraine has refused to say whether and how it carried out the attacks. The ISI images showed that the radar component of the S-300 battery had been moved separately from the same Masyaf base to Russia’s Khmeimim air base on the Syrian coast, north of Tartous. Company analysts said the radar component’s size and weight make it unsuitable for shipping by sea and may require airlift by Ilyushin-76 aircraft from Khmeimim back to Russia.
