The Russian government has been spreading “disinformation” about last week’s chemical-weapons attack, according to senior White House officials.
In a Tuesday briefing with reporters and in a document of declassified information distributed to the press, the administration says it has concluded the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad perpetrated the April 4 chemical attack on civilians in the Idlib province. Officials have also concluded that sarin gas, a potent nerve agent, was used.
But the Russian government, which is allied with Assad, has been publicly and privately offering alternative theories on the attack that killed dozens of people, including children. White House officials say the information from intelligence sources does not support any of what it called “disinformation” from the Russians.
“Across the board, starting in 2013 and then since, we’ve seen both the Russians and the Syrians have a very clear campaign to try to obfuscate the nature of attacks, the attackers, and what has happened at any particular incident,” said a White House official. “They throw out a bunch of potential agents, a bunch of potential responsible or accountable parties, and also their own information is inconsistent with their own narrative.”
Among those were that the chemical weapons belonged to rebel or terrorist groups opposed to the Assad regime.
“We have not assessed that ISIS or other terrorist groups have sarin,” a White House official said.
The White House also confirmed that Russian forces were discovered to have been at the Shayrat Airbase where Assad’s chemical-weapons deployment was launched and where a U.S. missile strike occurred on April 6 in response to that attack. The administration remains unwilling to conclude that the Russians were aware of the chemical-weapons attack, which the White House says was being planned since late March. But the White House does say it’s a “question worth asking.”
“Considering the fact that there were Russian forces co-located with Syrian forces at the Shayrat airfield, in addition to many other Syrian regime installations around the country, we do think it’s a question worth asking the Russians about how is it possible that their forces were co-located with Syrian forces that planned, prepared, and carried out a chemical weapons attack from the same installation and did not have foreknowledge,” said a White House official.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is currently in Moscow to meet with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. Whether Tillerson will also meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin is unclear.
