The Justice Department’s indictment of five Russians accused of violating U.S. sanctions on Syria has outraged the Russian government, which called the charges an act of “political blindness” and hostility in a Wednesday statement.
“Washington has again demonstrated its political blindness by accusing the staff of Sovfracht public joint stock company of shipping aviation fuel to Syria,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Recommended Stories
U.S. officials accused five Russians and three Syrians of conspiring to send jet fuel to a Syrian refinery, in violation of American sanctions on Syria and Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The indictment cites emails that appear to show the eight individuals discussing the need to establish shell companies to evade the sanctions and induce banks to work with them.
“The U.S. sanctions on Syria and Crimea thwart Syria’s support of terrorism and its pursuit and use of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the actions of those who seek to undermine Ukraine’s democratic processes and territorial integrity,” John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said Tuesday. “The National Security Division will not tolerate any attempts to evade these important foreign policy and national security tools.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s team denied that the fuel was bound for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
“The aviation fuel whose deliveries were ensured by Sovfracht was intended for units of Russia’s Aerospace Force, which are helping to fight terrorist groupings on Syrian soil,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Russia is providing crucial air support for Assad, who requested the help as his regime was on the brink of collapse in the fall of 2015 amid a years-long civil war. Russian President Vladimir Putin touted the intervention as an operation against the Islamic State.
Russian planes, however, targeted “areas from which the Islamic State was ejected more than a year and a half ago, and that are now controlled by a mixture of Western-backed moderate rebels, Islamists and al-Qaeda-linked fighters opposed to the Assad regime,” as the Washington Post put it at the time.
“The new anti-Russian statement is a new confirmation that the US … does not want in any way to learn the lessons of history and again, as we have already noted, is looking for an enemy in areas other than where it is actually present,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
