Russia is expected to provide the Bashar Assad regime with S-300 anti-aircraft defense systems soon, senior Russian officials told the Kommersant newspaper on Monday.
Russia says the latest US missile strikes against Syria have removed any moral obligation for Moscow not to deliver advanced S-300 missile defense systems to Syria.
“We promised not to do it around a decade ago at the request of our partners, and we took into consideration their argument that this would destabilize the situation, despite this [S-300] being a purely defensive system,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday.
The announcement has raised fears in Israel, which has been conducting frequent air raids against various targets in Syria in support of anti-Damascus militants.