MI6 warned about Russia's interests in Syria 60 years ago

The Times has published a secret memo of MI6 to the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The note written in 1957 states that Russia would react sharply to the attempt by the US to remove the government in Damascus.

Moscow would be bound to resist the overthrow of the Syrian regime "by every means short of those which, in their judgment, would be likely to involve them in a war with the West,” the Times cited the document.

The note contains a list of all the possible measures which, according to MI6, the USSR could take: the large-scale arming of Syria, a muscular display of Russian airpower, the bombing of hostile forces on Syrian territory, a 'war of nerves' with Turkey; warships sent to the Mediterranean to unsettle NATO, the emergence of combat units of mysterious Russian 'volunteers'.