From December 18 to 20, military transport aviation of the Russian Air Force organized the transfer of transport and other equipment to the airfield of the Syrian city of Latakia, which will be used to remove Syrian chemical weapons to the port for loading and transportation by sea to the disposal site. As Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported yesterday to President Vladimir Putin, Russian pilots made a total of 38 flights to Latakia, transferring 50 Kamaz trucks, 25 armored Ural trucks, tents, water tanks, kitchens and other equipment.

All of this will be handed over to the Syrian army, which, under the supervision of experts from the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), will begin transporting Syrian chemical weapons to the port of Latakia in the coming days. There, the weapons will be loaded onto two container ships provided by Norway and Denmark and transported under escort by ships from the navies of Russia, the United States and other NATO countries to the American vessel Cape Ray, which is in the open sea, where the installation of a mobile chemical weapons destruction unit is currently being completed. The weapons will be destroyed on this vessel in the open sea, and, as a source in the Ministry of Defense reported, several dozen sea voyages will be required to completely destroy the existing stockpiles. Earlier, an OPCW representative predicted that the process of destroying Syrian chemical weapons could be completed in the summer of 2014.

According to a source in the Ministry of Defense, Russian aviation flights and ship maneuvers are financed from the budget for combat training and do not require additional expenses, and the cost of trucks and other equipment is paid for from the section of the Defense Ministry budget for military-technical cooperation and fulfillment of international obligations and amounts to several hundred million rubles.

According to a source in the Air Force, mortar shelling in the Latakia area during the transfer of equipment took place, but no damage was caused to Russian military transport aircraft, the runway, or the equipment delivered. Turkey has allowed Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft into the country for the first time since the beginning of the war in Syria, a source told Vedomosti.

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