Following a US led strike on Syria’s capital, Damascus, and while staring down the barrel of a new round of sanctions against Russia, the Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a statement issued by the Kremlin, cautioned that any further military action against Syria by Western forces could further destabilize and “lead to chaos in international relations”.
On Saturday, President Trump ordered a “precision strike” against Damascus which included the participation of French and British forces with the aim of destroying the capabilities of the Syrian government to carry out chemical attacks as well as serving as a deterrent, as such action is thereby warned that it will be met with a military response by the “righteous” forces of a Western coalition.
The strike involved the launch of over 100 missiles aimed at Damascus and some surrounding areas, which Assad’s government was largely thwarted by the Air Defense capabilities of Syrian forces, which comes with a different story of the outcome coming out of the Pentagon insisting that each and every projectile successfully struck its target.
Since the strike on Saturday, protests by citizens in cities around the world have broken out in outcry against the West’s military strike in Syria. Reuters reports:
MOSCOW/DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Sunday that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctions.
In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement.
“Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the U.N. Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,” the Kremlin statement said.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” program that the United States would announce new economic sanctions on Monday aimed at companies “that were dealing with equipment” related to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged chemical weapons use.
On Saturday, the United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7.
The Western countries blame Assad for the Douma attack that killed dozens of people. The Syrian government and its ally Russia have denied involvement in any such attack.
The bombings marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and ally Russia.
Naturally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has condemned the strike as an act of aggression, remarks which he made to a visiting group of Russian legislators, followed by his praise of soviet era anti missile defense hardware, which the Syrian government utilized to counter the US led missile strike. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Theresa May is taking flak from Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn over her failure to consult the British Parliament about her intentions to join the US and France in launching the “limited” assault on Damascus.
French President Macron has taken some fire from both the left and right on the basis that the strike had a purpose of serving American interests first, lacked a UN mandate, and the cause for which it was approved lacked grounds as the investigation, on-going by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has not yet been completed and no determination of the origin of the suspected attack has yet come forward.
The choice to utilize a military response to an unverified claim of the possession of use of chemical weapons is one that is both open to and receiving criticism from both policy makers, media analysts, and common citizens the world over, as it brings one’s mind back to the accusations that were made against the former regime of Iraq, presided over by Saddam Hussein, wherein a quagmire of a war was initiated which has had long lasting effects that continue to this day, and which claimed the lives of at least a million Iraqis. In short, it’s no wonder that there would be such outcry against such a blatantly illegal and hasty attack based on little or no evidence as grounds for its justification.
The post Further strikes against Syria will lead to ‘global chaos,’ warns Putin appeared first on The Duran.