ERBIL, Kurdistan Region--Since Russia sent its own military forces into Syria in late September it has achieved many of its goals and could sustain operations at the current level for years to come, according to anonymous U.S. officials. The Reuters news agency found that five separate officials with knowledge on the issue, when asked separately, all concurred that Moscow is already achieving some of its goals and is in fact in a position to maintain its current deployment and operations for the foreseeable future. Russia sent air power to Syria in September to provide the regime of Bashar al-Assad with additional firepower and a technological edge over its enemies. And so far it's producing results. "I think it's indisputable that the Assad regime, with Russian military support, is probably in a safer position than it was," beforehand concluded one official. Another intelligence official explained how sustainable the deployment is. It is being funded by Russia's annual defense budget which amounts to $54 billion. Continued operations will cost about $1-2 billion of that annually. Russia uses its own natural fuel reserves to power its aircraft and naval vessels and even has a cheap and steady supply of bombs since it has begun using leftover stockpiles from the Soviet-era. Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently condemned Russia for its use of older bombs in Syria which are indiscriminate and invariably cause more civilian casualties. While U.S. officials immediately denounced the build-up last September, including President Barack Obama who claimed that Moscow would find itself embroiled in a "quagmire", one intelligence official has argued that, "The Russians didn't go blindly into this." In fact, he went on to say, they "are getting some benefit out of the cost." However there is agreement that Obama's assessment may prove correct since in the long-term they could end up becoming, in the words of one of the officials, "bound up in a civil war in a way that's going to be extremely difficult to extricate themselves from." The deployment is relatively small but consists of highly advanced Russian warplanes. Approximately 5,000 Russian personnel are based in Syria, some of whom are support personnel, pilots, technicians and advisers to the Syrian military.
