The downing last week by Basher Assad’s forces of a Russian spy plane has clearly infuriated the Kremlin. The Syrian army used a Russian-supplied missile to shoot down the Russian Ilyushin Il-20 electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft. The destruction of this plane appears to have been a clever sting operation by the Israelis who had mounted an airstrike on Latakia at precisely the time the spy plane had been in the same airspace.

The upshot is that the Russians have taken over control of Syria’s air defenses. It is hard to believe Moscow would announce the long-delayed supply of four batteries of S-300 surface-to-air missiles without ensuring that they alone would be responsible for their operation. Indeed this is borne out by Russian plans to upgrade Syrian air defense command posts providing centralized control over all missiles and aircraft. President Vladimir Putin’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu said, perhaps with more than a hint of bitterness, that the new systems meant that “the identification of all Russian aircraft by Syrian air defenses will be guaranteed”.

One question that commentators have failed to ask is what the Russian spy plane was doing flying off the Syrian coast. There are known to be French and US naval units there, aboard which is certain to be equipment to monitor signals and air movements. Israel too has its own sea and airborne spy systems as well as its high-powered listening posts on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The Russians will have very probably been watching these, but it seems inevitable that their gaze will also have been on the activities of the Turkish armed forces. The standoff over the encircled province of Idlib remains tense. There seems little belief the Russian-Turkish buffer zone is a lasting solution. Besides surviving units of the Free Syrian Army, there are Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and Al-Qaeda-linked terror groups along with hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Putin wants to keep Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his new best friend, thus neutralizing the key NATO member on his southern flank. But at the same time, the Kremlin has invested too much in Syria, not least in its amiable relations with Iran whose troops are also bolstering the Assad dictatorship. Putin has assuredly tried to soften Erdogan’s Syrian policy which these days is dominated more by the existence of the Syrian Kurdish militias of the YPG and their links to Turkey’s Kurds.

It would undoubtedly suit Moscow to have Assad cut adrift the Syrian Kurds, who have been his unofficial allies. However, Assad will be thinking that he may still need them to enforce his bloody peace. And besides, he would not want the Turkish military to be occupying a part of the north of his country, which is surely what Ankara would like to happen.

Moscow’s complete takeover of Assad’s air defense systems is part and parcel of the way in which it has effectively assumed responsibility for the running of the dictator’s vicious war against his own people. The regime may boast of its successes all over the country save Idlib, but those victories have been won by Russian warplanes, Russian special forces, Russian money, Russian arms and Russian munitions. Assad now has even less claim to be running his country.