For the past week, Russian news media speculated dramatically about the looming onset of World War III. But soon after American cruise missiles finally slammed into Syria, Moscow made it clear it did not plan to escalate on the battlefield.
Russian officials from President Vladimir Putin on down condemned the strike as an act of aggression against a sovereign state carried out on the pretext of staged chemical attack. But reading between the lines, there was a second message: The incoming cruise missiles did not cross the threshold that would provoke a military response against Western forces.
Early Saturday morning local time, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that more than 100 missiles were fired by the U.S.-led coalition retaliating against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s suspected use of chemical weapons. But it added that no Russian air defenses were deployed against the incoming fire, even though thousands of its troops are stationed across Syria in support of Russian ally Assad.
Hours later, the Russian Embassy in Damascus said no Russians were known to have been hurt in the overnight airstrike. And the Defense Ministry even made sure to note that while Syria shot down some cruise missiles, Damascus did so using its own, Soviet-made — not Russian-made — equipment.
“Not a single one of the cruise missiles entered the zone of Russian air defense systems,” the Defense Ministry said.
