President Trump is planning to order airstrikes against Syria that would destroy the possibility of an international investigation into the latest chemical weapons attack, a Russian diplomat suggested.
“[I]s the real purpose to promptly eliminate the traces of a provocation using smart missile strikes to create a situation where international inspectors will have no evidence to look for?” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.
Humanitarian workers reported Saturday dozens of civilians were killed and hundreds injured in a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Douma, a city outside of Damascus that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has been fighting to recapture. Russian officials denied that a chemical attack took place and suggested that terrorists in the vicinity might have staged the incident, but the United States and other western allies have blamed Assad.
“Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria,” Trump tweeted early Wednesday in response to reports that Russia would try to protect Assad. “Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”
Zakharova replied by touting Assad as the “legitimate government” of Syria. “Smart missiles should fly towards terrorists, not the legitimate government which has been fighting against international terrorism in its territory for several years,” she said.
Russia vetoed a U.S-drafted resolution to establish an international body to investigate the latest attack during a Wednesday meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Russia’s alternative proposal failed to pass, garnering just six votes on the 15-member body. But investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are expected to deploy on their own authority.
In the meantime, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom are reportedly mulling joint strikes against the Assad regime.
“We know that only certain players, to use your word, have access to these kinds of chemical weapons,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tuesday in response to a reporter’s question. “We know that it requires certain kinds of delivery mechanisms to use these kinds of weapons. Not everyone out there has access to those delivery mechanisms. So, we have that information, we’re familiar with it.”
