Russians To Ship Assad Mig Jet Fighters

The Russians are announcing that they plan to supply the Assad regime with 10 Mig 29 fighter planes.

If they're delivered, you can also assume some Russian pilots will go with them, since the Syrians are, shall we say, perhaps not a good match for this type of relatively sophisticated equipment:

On Friday, journalist Ali Branstien reported in Hebrew daily Ma'ariv that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hinted in his meeting earlier this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel will prevent the Assad regime of making the S-300 missiles operational.

The paper reported the Russians were "shocked" from the prime minister's "boldness." Sources that were briefed on the meeting told Ma'ariv that Putin had "understood exactly what Netanyahu meant," and that "it came as no surprise to Moscow" when National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror warned European diplomats Israel might take such an action

The idea here is obviously to prevent any implementation of a no fly zone by President Obama, and as a side benefit to try and prevent any further attacks by Israel on weapons transfers from Syria to Hezbollah.

I actually think the Russians might end up thinking twice about this. They've had their pilots come up against the IDF before, in 1973, in 1982 and in 2001 and the results were pretty bad for them each time.