Russian spies should cooperate more closely with Turkey and Iran, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.
“I suggest enhancing our coordination among the foreign ministries, defense ministries and special services,” Putin during a summit in Tehran.
The former KGB officer issued that proposal during a meeting focused on the next phase of the civil war, where Russia and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad are on the cusp of an offensive against a major rebel-held territory. The meeting attests to Putin’s effort to establish a regional triumvirate in concert with Iran and Turkey, despite the latter’s formal membership in NATO, just as western powers seek a crackdown on Russian spy agencies that are sometimes called “special services”
“And our joint efforts can serve as a lead for settling other disputes in this region,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani concurred, during a bilateral meeting with Putin. “Despite the fact that everything that is happening in Syria are sad developments, our two nations are able to help not only the Syrian army and government, but also its people to cope with this situation.”
That meeting coincided with a United Nations Security Council meeting dedicated to the impending threat of a pro-Assad assault on Idlib, where a mix of the Free Syrian Army and al Qaeda affiliates are entrenched against Assad. Russia and Assad are preparing to use chemical weapons in the offensive, according to western powers who also want to forestall a conventional attack.
“There are more babies in Idlib than there are terrorists,” Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United Nations, said during the meeting.
Russian spy operations and the Idlib problem have dominated Security Council meetings over the last week. The United Kingdom indicted two Russian military intelligence officers over the use of a chemical weapon in an assassination attempt in Salisbury, England. Russia, which denies any involvement, countered that the British are stoking the Salisbury incident in order to undermine Russian claims that it is the terrorists in Syria rather than Assad who are planning to use chemical weapons in Idlib.
“We have conclusive evidence that militants are preparing such operations and provocations,” Putin insisted Friday.
Those claims follow a pattern of Russian and Syrian propaganda, according to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. “That is the exact formula they always follow before a chemical weapons attack that Assad does on his own people,” she told reporters Tuesday.
And British Prime Minister Theresa May wants western allies to undertake a “collective” crackdown on the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
“The actions of the GRU are a threat to all our allies and to all our citizens,” she said Wednesday. “And on the basis of what we have learned in the Salisbury investigation – and what we know about this organization more broadly – we must now step up our collective efforts, specifically against the GRU.”
