Russian ambassadors and their foreign counterparts must grapple with the fact that “the world is becoming more chaotic,” President Vladimir Putin told a diplomatic assembly Wednesday.
“The situation in the world is becoming more chaotic, nevertheless we still hope that common sense will eventually prevail, and that international relations will take a constructive course, and the entire world system will become more stable and predictable,” Putin said at the Kremlin.
Russian officials have argued for a “post-West” world order with multiple power centers to replace the American hegemony that emerged from the end of the Cold War. But Putin’s remarks implicitly spoke to concerns of a crisis brewing in Syria, where the United States and Russia have supported opposing sides of a civil war in which the incumbent regime has used chemical weapons to fight rebels and terrorist groups.
“Diplomacy includes a wide field of activity; its hallmark is the development of optimal solutions based on a balance of interests,” Putin said as he welcomed diplomats from 17 nations. “Diplomats try to facilitate a collegial search for answers to large-scale challenges and threats, such as terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and climate change.”
International debates about the use of chemical weapons in Syria have been anything but “collegial” in recent days. Humanitarian groups reported Saturday that hundreds of civilians were gassed in Douma, a city on the outskirts of Damascus, but Russian officials maintain that the incident was staged to justify a western assault on Assad and a broader denunciation of Putin’s government.
“We are not particularly keen to be friends with you,” Vasily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said to U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley through a translator at the Security Council on Monday. “So-called friends of yours are only those who cannot say no to you, and, this is the sole criterion for friendship in your understanding.”
Haley did not mince words in blaming Putin for the chemical weapons attacks.
“The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered in the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims,” she said during the meeting. “What’s the point of trying to shame such people? After all, no civilized government would have anything to do with Assad’s murderous regime. Pictures of dead children mean little to governments like Russia, who expend their own resources to prop up Assad. And this council, which saw these pictures last year, has failed to act because Russia has stood in its way every single time.”
Russia and the United States offered dueling proposals to set up a U.N. investigation of the Douma incident. Both failed, as Russia vetoed the American proposal and the Security Council voted down the Russian alternative. That diplomatic stalemate has heightened the possibility that Russia will retaliate, in some fashion, if the United States and western allies proceed with an expected attack on Assad.
“If an attack occurs against the forces [in Syria] backed by Russia or there is an attack by the U.S.-supported forces, Russia won’t be able to stay away, otherwise it will lose its influence,” Turkish National Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli said Wednesday. “So, serious clashes may start.”
But western officials feel pressure to strike Assad in order to enforce international bans on the use of chemical weapons.
“Russia has crossed the line in the international order,” British Ambassador Karen Pierce, who represents the United Kingdom at the United Nations, said Tuesday. “Russia would rather cross the WMD line than risk sanction of its ally Syria.”
