Western powers should not blame Russia for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s actions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in response to the latest report of a chemical weapons attack.
“As for the reaction of our foreign colleagues in Washington, Paris, London and other places, it is all quite simple: This was done by the regime, and if Russia supports the regime, then it is both Russia’s and Iran’s fault, and it is necessary to conduct an investigation,” Lavrov said Monday. “It is rather difficult for a logical person to understand the correlation between one and the other.”
Lavrov was attempting to distance Russian President Vladimir Putin from Assad, paired with the more familiar claim that the most recent use of chemical weapons was staged in order to justify a western assault on the Assad regime. The attack, which humanitarian monitors say killed dozens of civilians and injured hundreds of others, took place just over a year after another chemical weapons attack that provoked President Trump’s authorization of an airstrike against the Assad regime.
“This is about humanity and it can’t be allowed to happen,” Trump told reporters Monday. “If it’s the Russians, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out.”
Russia is warning the United States and other Western powers not to intervene in the situation.
“Guessing about what would happen, if something occurs is, perhaps, inappropriate,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. “The situation is, indeed, tense and we have heard quite alarming statements. Here one can only hope for a weighed approach and that third countries will not allow some actions that may destabilize the situation in Syria, which is quite fragile even without that.”
Putin warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel about “the inadmissibility of provocations and speculations” in a Monday phone call, even as the United Nations Security Council prepares for an emergency meeting on the incident. Lavrov followed that line while impugning the credibility of Western assessments.
“We are in total support of a fair and immediate investigation, when they ask for it,” he said. “However, when the investigation is intended to come at a predetermined point — that is, it was done by Assad with Putin’s support — there are no grounds for a serious discussion.”
Trump criticized Putin by name on Saturday, a rare personal attack that suggests his confidence in Assad’s responsibility for the attack. British officials share that view, as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson concurred in a Monday call with Acting Secretary of State John Sullivan.
“The foreign secretary and acting secretary of state agreed that, based on current media reports and reports from those on the ground, this attack bore hallmarks of previous chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime,” a U.K Foreign Office spokesperson said Monday. “They reiterated their commitment to standing up for the Chemical Weapons Convention and to ensuring that those responsible for this horrific attack are held to account. They underlined the importance of the U.K., the U.S. and France remaining in close touch.”
