BANGKOK — From their perch in Thailand, air force officers track radar blips of the busy skies above neighboring Myanmar, where Russian-made fighter jets and helicopter gunships are being deployed in aerial attacks as Myanmar’s troops increasingly lose control on the ground.
During two days in early April, there were 21 flights “to bomb and for logistics,” a highly-placed source in the Thai military told Nikkei Asia.
“Fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, all Russian, were used about 10 kilometers from the Thai-Myanmar border to bomb villages and to deliver supplies and ammo,” he said.
Sorties by Russian-made MiG-29 jets and Mi-35 helicopter gunships were conducted on the eve of Myanmar’s military regime losing control of Myawaddy in Kayin (Karen) state, a key trading town close to the Thailand-Myanmar border, to resistance forces led by the Karen National Union, one of the Southeast Asian nation’s oldest and largest armed ethnic groups.
Not surprisingly, the KNU is on edge in expectation of the aerial backlash. “We know that when the regime loses, they are very brutal in their response,” a source close to a senior leader of the KNU told Nikkei. “We are worried that the junta will use heavy air strikes like they have already done earlier this year.”
The regime’s Russian-supplied squadrons, which also include subsonic Yak-130s for light combat and training, and newly acquired multirole Su-30 jet fighters, are responsible for a spike in attacks across wide swathes of the war-torn country in the past five months. This followed a heavy defeat suffered by the military regime in late October to an alliance of three armed ethnic groups, including the Arakan Army, in Shan state near the Chinese border.
One study by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based non-profit organization, revealed that there were 588 air strikes between November 2023 and March this year. Nearly one-fifth of those attacks, the report added, targeted strongholds of the Arakan Army, a battle-hardened ethnic armed group that is gaining ground in Rakhine state in the country’s west.
A major source of tension with Islamabad, the Myanmar Air Force also has 11 JF-17 Thunder jets from Pakistan that it jointly developed with China. These were acquired before the 2021 military takeover, but have proved unfit for service and are grounded pending their replacement.
A study published in January 2023 by Myanmar Witness, a human rights group, reported that the regime mounted air strikes in 10 of the country’s 14 administrative divisions during the last six months of 2022. “Air strikes are an almost daily occurrence,” it said in “Eyes on the skies.”
“The military ties between Russia and Myanmar are at an all-time high since the coup,” a Yangon-based political analyst told Nikkei on condition of anonymity. “It is partly because Russia supplies weapons and military hardware to the junta, and partly because the junta wants to balance out China’s influence.”
Others, like Oleg Ignatov, senior Russia analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, point to Moscow’s admission that “it has a strategic partnership” with Myanmar.
“Russia has many different arms contracts with different countries,” he said. “Myanmar is primarily interested in aviation, air defense and some armored vehicles. Relations are based only on security relations — on military relations.”
That is clearly reflected in weapons deals between the two countries documented by the Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute, a Swedish think tank that tracks the global arms industry.
“Myanmar and Russia — and China as well — have not made much of a secret of their general arms sales relations,” said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at SIPRI. “They have been the main suppliers in the last 20 years — China supplied 43% and Russia 41% of the total volume of major arms to Myanmar.”
Russian-made aircraft in Myanmar also include Mi-14P combat helicopters and Mi-17 transport helicopters in addition to the MiG-29s, Mi-35s and Yak-130s. Four Su-30s have been delivered and two more are on order, according to the SIPRI database.
| Russian air power supplied to Myanmar | |
| Mi-29s and MiG-29s | 20 |
| Yak-130s | 20 |
| Mi-17 transport helicopters | 12 |
| Mi-24P combat helicopters | 10 |
| Su-30s | 4 |
| Source: SIPRI | |
“Most of these have been seen in action against Myanmar’s rebel forces over the years, generally using guns, rockets and unguided bombs — not guided precision weapons,” said Wezeman.
The trail of civilian deaths, injuries and damaged buildings in the wake of the airstrikes has fueled heavy criticism of the regime for indiscriminate attacks on ethnic areas. In its 2023 annual report, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch condemned the military regime for “increased unlawful airstrikes.” For one airstrike in April 2023, “Myanmar’s military used a thermobaric weapon — a fuel-air explosive — in Sagaing Region that killed more than 160 civilians,” it said.
Chin state in northwestern Myanmar near the border with India has also been targeted.
“Airstrikes have been launched day and night by the junta and civilian casualties have been very high,” Sui Khar, vice chairman of the Chin National Front, the political wing of the Chin National Army, told Nikkei from Camp Victoria, the mountain base of the ethnic armed group near the Indian border. He described the indiscriminate bombing of churches, temples and homes.
“The airstrikes are now the only effective means for the Myanmar military to respond to its growing losses across the country,” he said.
source : asia.nikkei