MOSCOW: Russia’s military on Sunday blamed “misleading” information from the Israeli airforce for the downing of one of its planes in Syria last week, and denounced the “adventurism” of Israeli pilots.

Israel strongly disputed the assertion and vowed it will continue to act against Iranian targets in neighbouring Syria.

A Syrian air defence missile downed the Russian IlyushinIl-20 military plane on September 17, killing all 15 soldiers aboard and threatening to damage relations between Russia and Israel, which three years ago set up a hotline to avoid accidental clashes in Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to seek to move past the incident in spite of strong statements from the Russian military.

On Sunday, military spokesman Igor Konashenkov presented the results of an investigation.

Moscow has accused Israel’s fighter pilots of using the bigger Ilyushin as cover, causing Syria’s Soviet-era S-200 air defence system to interpret the Russian plane as a target.

Israel denied this version of events and its air force commander flew to Moscow following the incident, which Putin called the result of a “chain of tragic accidental circumstances.” It was the deadliest known case of friendly fire between Syria and key backer Russia since Moscow’s game-changing 2015 military intervention.

Konashenkov said the Russian military received a call from Israeli command at 1839 GMT on the day of the incident to warn that Israel would be striking “north of Syria”, where the Il-20 surveillance aircraft was monitoring the Idlib de-escalation zone.

Russia ordered its plane back to base. Then, “one minute” after Israel’s call, its F-16 planes struck targets in Latakia in western Syria, he said.

“The misleading (information) by the Israeli officer regarding the location of the strikes made it impossible to guide the Il-20 to a safe location,” said Konashenkov.

As the Il-20 was landing near Latakia, one of the F-16 planes “began manoeuvres” at 1859 GMT “getting closer to the Il-20”, which was interpreted as a repeat attack by the Syrian air defence and resulted in it being shot down, he said.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2018