Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said that Russia is sending new armed helicopters to Syria and warned this could "dramatically" escalate the level of violence, according to dpa. In remarks at a think tank in Washington, Clinton said the US was "concerned" about the "latest information that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria, which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically." New shipments of attack helicopters would contradict reassurances from Russia that its military exports to Syria "can't be used against civilians," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland noted. Russia has through the years sold military equipment to Damascus. Nuland said there are already "Soviet-made helicopters or Russian-made helicopters ... being used by the regime against their own people." She made clear that Clinton was not referring to those aircraft already in Syria.
