by Anne Barnard and Andrew E. Kramer
BEIRUT: In a second day of raids in Syria, Russian warplanes carried out a new round of airstrikes Thursday that once again — contrary to Moscow's assertions — appeared to be targeting not the Islamic State but a rival insurgent coalition.
Russia sent more than 50 aircraft on about 30 sorties over Syria on Thursday, using drones and satellites to identify targets, said Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry. They were able to deploy quickly, he said, because ammunition and other supplies had been stockpiled at the Tartus naval base on Syria's Mediterranean coast, Russia's only military site outside the former Soviet Union.
Russia's entry into the Syrian conflict, which started Wednesday with a bombing attack on Syrian opposition fighters, has been angrily condemned by US officials. They fear that President Vladimir Putin of Russia is using their shared goal of defeating the Islamic State as a pretext for weakening other opponents of Syria's embattled president, Bashar Assad. Putin says Assad is a bulwark against the Islamic State; President Barack Obama says Assad must go, though perhaps in a "managed transition" to a new government.
The new round of strikes Thursday — conducted with two models of Soviet-era warplanes, the Su-25 Frogfoot and Su-24 Fencer — was said by Mayadeen, a pro-Damascus news channel, to target the Army of Conquest, a coalition of insurgent groups that include the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, the hard-line Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and a range of less extreme Islamist groups — all of which oppose the Islamic State.
Russian officials nonetheless insisted that they had hit four "objects of the Islamic State" in the provinces of Idlib, Hama and Homs. The Islamic State is most active in areas significantly to the east of those regions. Russia, like Assad, has tended to make little distinction among the many insurgent groups in Syria's four-year-old civil war.
The Russian military incursion may not be limited to Syria, the deputy foreign minister, Ilya Rogachev, suggested Thursday in Moscow. He indicated that Moscow would be receptive to an invitation by Baghdad to assist in the fight against Islamic State in that country.
Later, during a news conference at the United Nations, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said there were no immediate plans to hit targets in Iraq. "We were not invited. We were not asked," he said. "We are polite people."
In response to a question about which organizations in the region Russia considers to be fair targets, Lavrov was equally vague, saying: "If it looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist, fights like a terrorist, it's a terrorist, right?"
The Russian airstrikes, a major new twist in the war, come after a series of setbacks that had put Assad in his shakiest position in years.
A government soldier serving in Homs province said the Russian military support had arrived just in time. Without it, he said, Islamic State forces could have reached the provincial capital of Homs. "And I don't just think so," he said. "I'm sure.
"It should have started a long time ago," he added, speaking by telephone and asking not to be identified for fear of repercussions for speaking to a foreign news outlet. "Now, half the people have died or emigrated."
Government forces lost ground in recent months not only to the Islamic State in the east and center of the country, but also to the Army of Conquest in the northwest, where its advances have posed the war's sharpest threat to the coastal provinces that are Assad's base.
By striking at the group, Russia is unlikely to be able to give Assad full control over the country. But doing so could help him buy time, extending the deadly standoff — and prompting US allies, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to pour more materiel into the conflict.
Often fighting alongside the Army of Conquest are relatively secular groups from what is left of the loose-knit Free Syrian Army, including some groups that have received US training and advanced US-made anti-tank missiles. At least one group trained by the CIA was among the targets hit Wednesday, which drew an angry response from Washington.
The targeting choice underlined a fundamental dispute between the US, its allies and Syrian opponents of Assad on one hand, and Assad and Russia on the other.
The Russian state news agency RIA reported Thursday that airstrikes by the Syrian military, which is working with the Russian air force, had killed 107 militants, including three commanders of the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's branch in Syria, near Homs.
But Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Senate, denied the charge that Russia was overlooking Islamic State targets and instead attacking other opponents of Assad's. "There is no evidence able to prove these groundless claims that are being spread today," Kosachev said.
Assad, and now Russia, make little distinction among Islamist insurgent groups, and their supporters suggest that any such distinctions are meaningless hairsplitting. US policy appears to reflect an acknowledgment that the Nusra Front and its allies — while many of them are unpalatable — often clash with the Islamic State and have differing goals and tactics.
Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ash Carter have denounced Russia's first round of airstrikes, pointing out that Russian pilots did not hit known strongholds of the group. Instead, they targeted areas held by other insurgents, including some US-trained ones, in strikes that killed 40 people, including some civilians.
But the Army of Conquest itself embodies the ambivalence of US policy. The United States considers the Nusra Front a terrorist organization, but other groups, including some that have received US funding, fight alongside the Nusra front, saying that they have no choice if they want to unseat Assad.
Amid the discord, Pentagon officials held a one-hour so-called deconfliction meeting Thursday morning via videoconference with their Russian counterparts, Department of Defense officials said, in an effort to make sure that American and Russian pilots over Syria do not get into one another's way.
Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said the talk was "cordial and professional," but it seems no promises were made: Officials from the two countries exchanged proposals and "both sides agreed to consider the proposals and provide feedback."
"We made crystal clear that at a minimum the priority should be the safe operation of the air crew in Syria," Cook said.
Kerry said he expected the Russian and American militaries to follow up Thursday's talks with further discussions. "They are working on the next meeting, and the meeting will happen, I am confident," he said.
"What is important is Russia has to not be engaged in any activities against anybody but ISIL," Kerry added. "We have made that very clear."