Around 60 percent of Russian military police officers have received wartime experience in Syria in fewer than three years of deployment, a Russian Defense Ministry official said Monday.
Officers began patrolling the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel in 2016 and installed observation posts in the area.
“Currently around 60 percent of the military police personnel have been involved in special operations in Syria,” Lieutenant General Vladimir Ivanovsky, the chief of Russia’s military police, was cited as telling reporters by the state-run TASS news agency.
Apart from their presence in the Golan Heights, Russian officers have also patrolled the northern town of Manbij, which has been under the control of Kurdish forces since 2016, he noted.
A recent operation was to protect a UN humanitarian convoy traveling to the Rukban refugee camp in Al-Tanf on the southeastern border, he added.
“War experience in Syria has been invaluable to the officers and from Dec. 1 last year, has been included in the training program [of military police],” Ivanovsky said.