The Trump administration should confront Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad’s escalating slaughter of Syrian civilians.
It’s a newly urgent concern in the face of an escalating Syrian-Russian offensive in Syria’s western Idlib governate. Breaching a ceasefire brokered by Turkey, Syrian and Russian warplanes on Wednesday launched dozens of airstrikes. One attack on Idlib’s al Hal Market killed at least 19 people, injuring many more.
This targeting of civilians is absolutely deliberate. And it reflects two things.
First, Putin’s utter disdain for his useful idiot friend Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Second, Putin’s desire to finally crush Idlib under Assad’s boot.
On the first point, Putin is reminding Erdogan that he has little interest in making sacrifices to benefit the Turkish leader. Erdogan has idiotically aligned himself with Putin in the hope that doing so will earn the Russian president’s support for his regional agenda. Front and center here is Erdogan’s effort to assume the mantle of the Levant’s Sunni Muslim guarantor. But as with his attack last August against a Turkish convoy, Putin’s slaughter in Idlib this week is intended to remind Erdogan that Putin ultimately views him as a joke. Erdogan is impotent in the face of Putin’s antics.
These airstrikes also reflect Putin’s more basic desire to help Assad crush the rebel remnants against his rule. Unlike the U.S. military, Putin has zero interest in mitigating civilian suffering. On the absolute contrary, that’s why the Russians are leading these strikes. Al Hal market is just one of a long list of civilian targets bombed by the Russians in Idlib (Putin has a particular love for bombing hospitals). The intent here is to cause so much pain to Idlib’s civilian population that rebel fighters give up without a fight. It is a strategy built upon war crimes, pure and simple.
The United States should not stand for it.
At the very least, the Trump administration should call an emergency meeting at the United Nations Security Council. There, it should present evidence of what Russia and Assad are doing — and, via communications intercepts and other radar track recordings, show the world that this slaughter of civilians is deliberate. That won’t hold Russia to account, of course, but it will embarrass Putin’s regime and make it harder for other nations to play nice with Putin.
