Although Russia and Turkey signed a ceasefire agreement in Idlib on March 5, 2020, half a month later, most Syrian opposition forces led by HTS not only ignored the agreement and continued to attack Syrian military positions, but also blew up a bridge on the M4 highway on March 17 in an attempt to sneak up on the Russian military police patrol convoy that passed by. In view of this, foreign media said that Russia and Syria are stepping up their war preparedness and planning to launch a new round of large-scale operations.
According to the Russian independent military website "Southern Front", on the evening of March 15, 2020, the Russian military chartered "Sparta II" Ro-Ro cargo ship (sparta II) crossed the Bosphorus Strait to transport a large number of arms to the Syrian port of Tartus on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Russian media expect that the ship will arrive at the port on the morning of March 20. It is reported that this is the third time in the past year that the Spartan II has sailed to Syria. The sailing dynamics of this cargo ship are therefore regarded by the outside world as the "timetable + barometer" of the syrian war process.
In April 2019, Syrian government forces launched a large-scale military operation code-named "idlib dawn", with the goal of recovering thousands of square kilometers of land occupied by rebels (mainly hts) in southern Idlib and northern Hama province.
In order to support the Syrian army's ground operations, the Russian Air and Space Force stationed in Syria launched a series of fierce air strikes on rebel targets since April 30, 2019, and the intensity of the blows is considered to be "unprecedented in recent years". It is reported that it was the "Spartan II" that transported enough bombs to allow the Russian bombing operation to continue until the Unilateral Ceasefire declared by the Syrian authorities on May 18 of the same year.
According to the global ship tracking and positioning website vesselfinder, the Spartan II was built in 2000, with a length of 122 meters, a width of 19 meters, and a displacement of about 7200 tons. Its full load of arms departed from Novorossiysk, an important port on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, and sailed for about 12 days to Tartus, with a total voyage of about 2700 kilometers.
At the end of July 2019, the Syrian army launched a large-scale offensive with the support of Russian fighter air strikes, and in only 3 weeks, it recaptured four important towns, including the "chemical weapons town" Han Xiehong (in April 2017, the US military fired 59 "Tomahawk" cruise missiles at Syrian military targets under the pretext of the town's "chemical weapons attack"), breaking the so-called "Iron Triangle" defense system built by the rebels in southern Idlib and northern Hama, paving the way for the Russian-Syrian coalition forces to directly push the provincial capital Idlib.
Russian media said that before the launch of the campaign, the "Spartan II" as usual shipped a large number of odab-500pmv aviation fuel air bombs (commonly known as thermobaric bombs) and fab-250 aerial bombs.
On the highway connecting Tartus and Hama, Syrian people also used their mobile phones to photograph Syrian military flatbed transport trucks filled with odab-500pmv thermobar bombs.
odab-500pmv is filled with 145 kg of high-energy liquid fuel and aluminum, magnesium, titanium, zirconium and other metal powders and non-metallic powders such as boron and silicon, first detonating the projectile body with a small amount of explosives, spreading the fuel into the surrounding air, and mixing the two to form an aerosol cloud.
The aerosol cloud is then ignited, which can produce a high temperature and high pressure hot fireball with a temperature of up to 2500 °C and an expansion of 2000 meters per second, thus forming a high-pressure shock wave and high-energy heat double killing effect.
In actual combat, Russian-Syrian fighters (Su-24/Su-27/MiG-29 fighters, Su-25 strike aircraft and Mi-24 gunships can all be used as projection platforms) dropped the 525 kg odab-500pmv thermobar shell, and exploded for the first time at an altitude of 30 meters above the ground to form a thick fog-like cloud, which exploded twice during the process of approaching the surface, which could effectively damage people, vehicles and buildings within a radius of 600 meters. Because of its terrible power, the thermobaric bomb is also known as a "quasi-nuclear bomb".
According to Russian media, the Ro-Ro cargo ship "Spartan II", which is about to arrive at the port of Tartus, carries a large number of odab-500pmv thermobar bombs. Charles Lister, an expert at the Middle East Institute, said in an article published on March 16, 2020, that the arrival of the arms ship may mean that Russia and Syria will launch a new offensive in Idlib in late March 2020.
In addition to cracking down on rebels and recovering lost land, in view of the rapid spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in many countries in the Middle East, the Syrian government army has also "divided into 2 roads" and opened up a "new front" against the epidemic.
Lebanon's Almasdarnews tv station (almasdarnews) quoted the Syrian Ministry of Health as saying on March 10 that no confirmed cases had been found in areas controlled by the Syrian authorities. However, according to US media reports, Pakistan believes that at least 8 confirmed cases in the country originated from Syria.
Russia's moskovsky komsomolets reported on March 17 that the Bashar regime announced domestic epidemic prevention and control measures on March 13, 2020 – leaving some of its military forces to continue to fight rebels on the idlib front, while the rest of the troops actively participated in the fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic in areas controlled by the Syrian authorities, including sending military medical teams and carrying out quarantine missions.
Russian media pointed out that although the Syrian authorities have actively taken action, the former's efforts may be weakened and undermined because some territory has not been recovered. On 18 March, three Turkish soldiers deployed in Idlib were confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 (more than 190 cases have been confirmed in Turkey).
But so far, the Turkish army and minions have not taken any disinfection, isolation and testing measures on the occupied Syrian territory, let alone providing necessary medical assistance to the local population.
Due to the war environment, the daily field diet of the Turkish army and rebels mainly relies on military cans, and the sanitary conditions in the field are also very poor, resulting in a high risk of infection on the battlefield. Foreign media believe that it is not excluded that the new crown virus is spreading between the Turkish army and rebels in Syria.
In this regard, Russian media commented that in the coming period, the Syrian government army will play a dual role - to destroy terrorism with "fire and sword", and at the same time to clean up the "outbreak center of potential epidemics" (referring to the land stolen by the Turkish army and rebels).