Did Russian Strikes Destroy 40% of ISIS in Syria? The 2015 Claim

Syria’s Envoy Claims Russian Strikes Destroyed 40% of ISIS Infrastructure

In early October 2015, about a week after Russia began bombing in Syria, Syria’s ambassador to Moscow, Riad Haddad, claimed that the strikes had already destroyed about 40 percent of the Islamic State’s infrastructure. That figure came from the Syrian government, Russia’s ally in the war. It was never independently verified, and evidence gathered at the time suggests most early Russian strikes hit other rebel groups rather than ISIS. Here is what happened that week, what the main players said, and how the intervention looks with hindsight.

What the Syrian ambassador claimed

In an interview, Haddad said Damascus estimated that about 40 percent of ISIS facilities had been destroyed. He also said many militants had been killed and that the survivors were retreating toward the Turkish border. He accused Turkey of having long protected them, a charge Ankara rejected.

No independent monitor, journalist or Western government confirmed the 40 percent figure. Even an outside observer with full access would struggle to measure the “infrastructure” of a group that ran oil smuggling, checkpoints and command posts spread across eastern Syria and Iraq. So the number tells us more about the Syrian government’s messaging than about what was happening on the ground. ISIS kept major cities such as Raqqa and Palmyra well into 2016 and 2017.

The Caspian Sea cruise missile strike

Russia’s air campaign began on 30 September 2015, with strikes around Homs and Hama. On 7 October, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced a new step. Four warships of Russia’s Caspian Flotilla had launched 26 Kalibr cruise missiles at 11 targets in Syria, flying roughly 1,500 kilometres across Iranian and Iraqi airspace. The ministry released footage of the launches, as seen in the image below.

Russian Defence Ministry footage showed missiles launched from Caspian Flotilla ships on 7 October 2015.

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

The strike was as much a demonstration as an attack. Few countries can fire precision cruise missiles over such a distance, and the launch showed Western militaries a weapon they had not seen used in combat. Russia said every missile hit its target. CNN, citing unnamed US officials, reported that four of the 26 missiles crashed in Iran. Moscow and Tehran both denied it, and the claim was never settled publicly.

How NATO and Washington responded

Reports at the time sometimes blurred two different voices: NATO and the US military. At a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels on 8 October 2015, Stoltenberg spoke of “a troubling escalation of Russian military activities” in Syria. Allies agreed to double the size of NATO’s rapid response force. Days earlier, Stoltenberg had called Russian jets’ violations of Turkish airspace unacceptable and dangerous.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter called Russia’s actions “erratic and self-defeating.” He complained that the cruise missiles had been fired from the Caspian Sea without warning and ruled out cooperating with Moscow while its strategy stayed the same. The US-led coalition had itself been bombing ISIS in Syria since September 2014, so the dispute was less about whether to strike than whom to strike.

Who was actually being hit?

From the first day, activists and Western governments said Russian strikes were focused on rebel groups threatening President Bashar al-Assad, rather than on ISIS. The early targets around Homs and Hama were in areas held mainly by other opposition factions. Secretary of State John Kerry raised this at the UN Security Council. The citizen journalist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently counted only two strikes on ISIS targets out of 36 it tracked in the campaign’s first weeks.

Russia rejected this, saying it was hitting “terrorists” in general. That label covered groups such as the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. It also included rebels the West considered moderate. Russia’s choice of targets makes sense given why it intervened. Moscow’s main aim was to save its ally in Damascus and protect its air base at Hmeimim and naval facility at Tartus. Fighting ISIS was one goal among several, not the only one.

Some commentators at the time argued that the US had no real intention of defeating ISIS. That goes too far. The US-led coalition flew thousands of strikes against the group and backed the Kurdish-led forces that took Raqqa in 2017. What is fair to say is that Washington and Moscow had opposing goals for Assad, and those goals shaped every choice of target.

The civilian cost

Air strikes in populated areas kill civilians, whoever carries them out. On the very first day of Russia’s campaign, the Violations Documentation Centre reported 43 civilian deaths, including nine children. Monitoring groups later estimated that Russian strikes had killed more than 7,700 civilians by April 2018, about a quarter of them children. The US-led coalition’s campaign against ISIS also caused large numbers of civilian deaths, especially during the battles for Raqqa and Mosul. Monitoring groups such as Airwars have spent years documenting both campaigns.

Numbers like these are a reminder to treat any celebratory claim about bombing results, such as “40 percent destroyed in a week,” with caution. Early figures usually come from one side of the conflict, and the people under the bombs rarely get to tell their side of the story in real time.

What happened next

Russia’s intervention turned the war in Assad’s favour. In March 2016, Vladimir Putin announced that the “main part” of Russian forces would withdraw, but operations continued. In December 2017, he declared ISIS defeated in Syria and announced another partial withdrawal, while making the bases at Hmeimim and Tartus permanent. ISIS lost its last territory in Syria in March 2019, after a long ground campaign led largely by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces with US air support.

Assad’s government finally collapsed in December 2024, when a rebel offensive reached Damascus and he fled to Moscow. That ended the intervention, nine years after the Caspian missiles were launched. Looking back, the October 2015 claims read best as wartime messaging. Russia’s air power did change the course of the war, but mainly by saving Assad rather than by wiping out ISIS in a week.

Sources: Wikipedia: Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war; RFE/RL via GlobalSecurity, 8 October 2015; original reports by True Activist and RT (video, no longer available).

Related: