Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned on Tuesday that some NATO countries and Ukraine are preparing a chemical weapons false flag provocation in Syria so as to discredit Russia in the Global South. They specified that “The plan of the operation envisages the militants dropping a mined container with chlorine from a UAV during strikes by the Syrian Armed Forces and the Russian Aerospace Forces on terrorist groups’ positions in the Idlib de-escalation zone”, which the White Helmets will then film.

The timing is suspicious since it coincides with the start of Israel’s ground operation in Lebanon. Syria isn’t any stranger to chemical weapons false flags so the latest one could have been cooked up in a jiffy by building upon the experience obtained in all the prior ones. It’s therefore possible that this scenario was speedily devised sometime in the past month after the aerial phase of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War began. The goal of this provocation might thus be to expand the scope of regional conflict.

The ground dimension of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War is already destabilizing enough for the region, but the Levant could be thrown further into chaos if Turkiye feels pressured by this false flag provocation into ramping up its military operations in Northwestern Syria. The worst-case scenario would be if this resulted in a conventional war between them, even if only by miscalculation, which could also greatly harm Russia’s interests as well.

It’s worked hard over the last nine years to root out terrorism in the Arab Republic, yet another large-scale conflict there could reverse its hitherto impressive gains, not to mention risk worsening its relations with Turkiye. To avoid any misunderstandings, no prediction is being made about a chemical weapons false flag actually being carried out, let alone that one would automatically lead to a conventional Turkish-Syrian war. All that’s being done is scenario forecasting in light of SVR’s warning.

Having clarified that, it’s possible that the most important reason why they decided to raise awareness about this reportedly impending plot is to inform the Turkish public and thus reduce the chances that their leadership is able to rally them in support of militarily escalating in Syria if this happens. Russia doesn’t want to see a conventional Turkish-Syrian war, let alone a sudden deterioration in their ties that sabotages its efforts to reconcile them, so it naturally follows that it would do its utmost to prevent this.

To that end, SVR’s warning not only defends Russia’s reputation ahead of this potential provocation like they explicitly sought to do, but it also advances the unstated goal of reducing the likelihood of a conventional Turkish-Syrian war afterwards, which would harm Russia’s interests too. It remains uncertain whether Turkiye will bite the bait if the orchestrators go through with their plan, but it could also be the case that its leadership or Western-aligned elements of its “deep state” are involved in it.

One can only speculate why President Erdogan or members of his country’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies would want this, but the first might want to exploit what he perceives to be “Russian weakness” while the second might want to provoke a crisis with Russia. Once again, the reader should remember that none of this might happen at all since this piece is just a scenario forecast and not a prediction, but they’d still do well to keep their eyes on Syria just in case.