The US Air Force was reinsured by informing the Russian military about the impending airstrike in Syria 5 minutes before the strike
The Russian side called the American airstrike on Syrian territory unacceptable. Recall that we are talking about an air strike that was inflicted by the US Air Force on infrastructure facilities that allegedly belonged to the Iranian military and pro-Iranian armed groups in the SAR. The Biden administration said this was a response to rocket attacks on a military base in Iraqi Erbil.
After the claims made by official Moscow about the air strike against the United States, the question arose: did the American military channels of information exchange to prevent incidents in the air? Let us remind that such channels have been operating de jure for several years, helping Russian and American military pilots to prevent dangerous "contacts" in the Syrian airspace.
The relevant question about whether the Russian military in Syria received messages from their American colleagues through the aforementioned communication channels was asked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. According to the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the United States informed the Russian military about the impending airstrike, but only did it about 4-5 minutes before it was delivered. Sergei Lavrov noted that such a warning was largely formal in nature, since, in principle, it could not influence the situation in any way from the point of view of the so-called "deconflicting". The Russian Foreign Minister made this statement during a joint briefing with a colleague from Afghanistan who had arrived earlier in Moscow for talks.
Sergei Lavrov:
I want to remind you that American troops are in Syria illegally, in violation of international law.
The actions of the American military to inform Russia about the impending airstrike are clearly connected with the fact that the Pentagon decided to minimize the very possibility of the Russian military transmitting the received data to the Iranian side.
Whether Russia was going to do this or not, including with regard to the pro-Iranian forces in Syria, is a separate question. But the US Air Force, in any case, preferred to play it safe, so that in the end the missiles "did not go into the bare sand." Formally, they used the data exchange line, but they did it in such a way that, by and large, there was no point in it.
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