Trump’s Attack on Syria Is an Act of Aggression: Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin regards the U.S. strikes on Syria as an attempt to draw public attention away from the numerous civilian casualties in Iraq.
By Rakesh Raman
The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, regards the U.S. airstrikes on Syria as an act of aggression against a sovereign state delivered in violation of international law under a far-fetched pretext.
In a Kremlin statement, Putin said the Syrian Army has no chemical weapons. The fact of the destruction of all Syrian chemical weapons’ stockpiles has been recorded and verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a specialised UN body.
Putin believes that complete disregard for factual information about the use by terrorists of chemical weapons drastically aggravates the situation.
Although President Trump decided to attack Syria with an unfounded assumption that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ordered the chemical attack, there is no evidence available for Assad’s role in the attack.
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The UN has also expressed its doubts about the reported use of chemical weapons in Syria. The UN had said last week that it is not in a position to independently verify these reports and the OPCW is currently in the process of gathering and analysing information to confirm if chemical weapons were used.
An emergency meeting of the Security Council was held Wednesday to discuss the reports of alleged chemical weapons use in Khan Shaykhun, southern rural Idleb, Syria.
A senior United Nations (UN) official for disarmament affairs said that while details are not yet fully known, new information continues to come in on the incident.
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“This move by Washington [the US airstrike on an air base in Syria] has dealt a serious blow to Russian-US relations, which are already in a poor state,” Putin said in the Kremlin statement.
Most importantly, he said, this move will not bring us closer to the ultimate goal of combatting international terrorism.
Putin added that the U.S. decision to attack Syria will create a major obstacle to the establishment of an international counterterrorist coalition and to effective struggle against this global evil, something that U.S. President Donald Trump declared as one of his main goals during his election campaign.
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According to the Kremlin statement, Putin regards the U.S. strikes on Syria as an attempt to draw public attention away from the numerous civilian casualties in Iraq.
On Friday, the United States had launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at an air base in Homs Province in western Syria.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a government’s National award-winning journalist and runs free school for deserving children under his NGO – RMN Foundation.
Photo courtesy: Kremlin
