Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergey Shoygu, has said that Russia’s actions prevented a NATO strike, comprising of 624 cruise missiles, on Syria. This was reported by Russian RIA Novosti.

“Syria’s situation was changing then. You have to ask yourself what would have happened if our president [Putin] had failed to convince parties of the idea surrendering and destroying of the chemical weapons. There were 624 NATO cruise missiles ready to be launched in 24 hours. That is the number I memorized. They were ready to be used in a massive attack on Syria,” Shoygu said.

He added that Russia and the US have come close to starting a joint military operation against the so-called Islamic State terrorist group in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Russia launched a military operation in Syria on the 30th of September 2015. Russian President Vladimir Putin then ordered the withdrawal of the main forces on the 14th of March 2016.

Russia has been repeatedly accused of untruthfulness in statements made about the objectives of its air strikes against opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which led to the deaths of innocent Syrians. However, the Russian Defense Ministry has said that the air strikes were only made on locations where there were no civilians.

Earlier this month, Putin submitted a bill to the State Duma on the indefinite deployment of Russian aviation troops in Syria.

  Russia, Syria

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