Russian nuclear missile cruiser to dock at Syrian port on Yom Kippur eve

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a four-ship Russian squadron led by the Peter the Great nuclear missile cruiser will visit Syrian ports after calling in at Tripoli, Libya. It will then proceed to the Caribbean for joint maneuvers with Venezuela.

Coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the Egyptian-Syrian Yom Kippur attack on Israel, the Russian warships’ arrival in Syria has serious connotations:

1. It means that prime minister Ehud Olmert will be wasting his time if he intends using his talks in Moscow next week with president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin to ask them to drop their plan for a permanent base at a Syrian port. That plan is clearly going full steam ahead.

2. The Yom Kippur War of 1993 is recorded in Russian and Arab military annals as the high point of Russian-Arab military and intelligence cooperation. The Soviet Union as it was then was responsible for the great deception which disguised Arab war preparations behind a screen of misdirection and gulled Israeli intelligence into complacence.

Moscow is signaling Jerusalem that it is reverting to its old military ties with Damascus.

3. Moscow attaches high importance to its new Damascus-Tehran-Caracas alignment opposite the US-Israel alliance.