Why the US Asked Greece to Close Its Airspace to Russian Syria Flights

US tried to block Russian aid planes for Syria from Greek airspace

In early September 2015 the United States asked Greece to stop Russian aircraft bound for Syria from crossing Greek airspace. Moscow described the flights as humanitarian aid; Washington suspected they were part of a Russian military build-up in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Athens said it was examining the request, Bulgaria closed its own airspace to the flights, and Russia switched to a route further east. Three weeks later, on 30 September 2015, Russian air strikes in Syria began.

The episode lasted only a few days, but it was an early sign of one of the biggest turns in the Syrian war. Here is what was asked, how the governments involved responded, and what the flights turned out to be part of.

What the US asked Greece to do

On Monday 7 September 2015, a spokesman for the Greek Foreign Ministry confirmed that the US had asked Athens to refuse Russian aircraft permission to fly through its airspace on the way to Syria. The ministry said the request was being studied. The day before, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency had quoted a diplomatic source in Athens as saying Greece had turned it down, reportedly to avoid damaging relations with Moscow.

Russia had asked Greece some weeks earlier for permission to send flights through the Athens flight information region between 1 and 24 September. Greece was then led by a caretaker government ahead of the general election of 20 September, which made any sharp diplomatic decision more delicate.

A short video report on the request originally appeared at this point; it is no longer online.

(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)

Why Washington was worried

The request did not come out of nowhere. Over the previous weekend, US Secretary of State John Kerry had phoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to say that, if reports of a Russian military build-up in Syria were accurate, it could escalate the war and risk a clash with the US-led coalition bombing the Islamic State group.

A senior US official pointed to what he called worrying preparatory steps, including the delivery of prefabricated housing for hundreds of people to a Syrian airfield. That kind of shipment suggested Russia was preparing to station personnel and heavy equipment, not simply to drop off relief supplies. Germany voiced similar concern, and a Lebanese newspaper reported that Russian military experts were inspecting Syrian air bases and lengthening runways.

What Russia and Syria said

Moscow's line was that the planes carried humanitarian aid and were also used to evacuate Russian citizens. At the same time Lavrov openly confirmed that Russia had long supplied military equipment to the Syrian government, saying it did so to fight terrorism, while calling talk of Russian combat operations premature. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would wait for an official decision from Athens before reacting.

Syria's information minister dismissed reports of increased Russian military activity as baseless. Within days, though, a Russian Foreign Ministry official acknowledged that Russian military specialists were helping deliver weapons to Syria.

Russian state media also pushed a broader message. On 5 September the broadcaster RT shared a clip of Vladimir Putin saying that refugees were fleeing Syria because of the Islamic State group rather than because of the Assad government. The post is no longer available:

#VIRAL People flee from Syria because of ISIS, not Assad regime - Putin http://t.co/3VyTJfDRjC pic.twitter.com/8bxh9BlKit
— RT (@RT_com) September 5, 2015

(This post is no longer available on X.)

How Greece and Bulgaria responded

The two NATO neighbours answered differently. Bulgaria said on 8 September that it had refused overflight permission to Russian aircraft heading for Syria. Its foreign ministry insisted the decision was its own, not taken under pressure from allies, and said it had information that the cargo was not what Russia had declared.

Greece never announced a clear refusal. Reports from Russian agencies, cited in the Greek newspaper To Vima, claimed that Athens had already granted access for humanitarian flights. Then on 8 September a Greek government source told Reuters that Russia had chosen a route east of Greece, so Greek airspace was no longer needed. A Greek spokesman confirmed that Moscow planned to fly further east. With that, the question was quietly dropped.

The eastern route ran over Iran and Iraq. Russian media reported that Iran had granted overflight permission, and later in the month Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria set up a joint information centre in Baghdad.

What the flights were really part of

Hindsight settled the argument about the cargo. From August 2015 Russia had been moving warplanes, T-90 tanks, artillery and troops to the Hmeimim air base near Latakia. On 26 August 2015 Russia and Syria signed an agreement allowing Russia to use the base free of charge and without time limit. On 30 September the Russian parliament approved the use of force abroad, and Russian jets struck targets around Homs and Hama the same day.

The intervention transformed the war. Russian air power helped the Syrian government recapture Aleppo in 2016 and large parts of the country by 2020. It also drew wide criticism from human rights groups over strikes on hospitals, markets and residential areas. The campaign lasted until December 2024, when opposition forces captured Damascus and the Assad government fell.

Why the airspace dispute still matters

Airspace may sound technical, but permission to overfly is one of the quiet tools of diplomacy. A state that controls a corridor can slow down, reroute or expose another country's operations. In 2015 the US tried to use its allies' airspace to make Russia's build-up harder; Russia showed it could work around the obstacle with help from Iran and Iraq.

The episode also shows why official labels deserve scrutiny. "Humanitarian aid" was the description Moscow chose. The prefabricated housing, the base agreement and the air strikes that followed told a fuller story. Reading early claims against later evidence is the best way to understand what was really happening in those first days of September 2015.

Sources: RT, September 2015 (original report); Reuters via Bangor Daily News, 7 September 2015; Al Jazeera, 8 September 2015; To Vima, 9 September 2015; Wikipedia: Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war.

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