Russian warship backs up airstrikes against fighters

Captain Alexander Shvarts watched on as the iron covers whirred open on the air defence system aboard the Russian Navy’s Moskva missile cruiser off the Syrian coast.

“This system can fire up to twelve missiles at any one time,” Capt. Shvarts said Thursday during a highly choreographed press tour of the ship arranged by the Russian defence ministry. “The range is around 70 kilometres.”

The Moskva — flagship of Russia’s Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet — is the largest warship the Kremlin has sent to support its bombing campaign in the war-torn nation.

It is patrolling some 10 nautical miles (13 km) offshore in the eastern Mediterranean.

Until about three weeks ago, the Soviet-era craft, built in 1983, was further out to sea providing protection for ships delivering supplies for the Russian base on land.

But after a Turkish F-16 fighter blasted a Russian jet out of the sky along the Syrian border it was ordered closer to shore to help ward off any future attacks on Russian planes bombing across Syria.

“Now our main task is to provide air cover for the Russian base at Hmeimim in Syria and for the Russian planes carrying our their tasks over the country,” Capt. Shvarts said.

Russia has bolstered its bombing campaign in Syria from the water — firing cruise missiles from a submarine in the Mediterranean earlier this month and from warships in the Caspian Sea far to the east.

The Moskva, however, is designed primarily to take out other vessels at sea and aircraft in the sky and has not used any of its fierce array of weaponry in the Syrian operation.

Meanwhile, suspected Russian airstrikes have killed 32 civilians, half of them women and children, in three areas in northern Syria, an observatory said.