Chemical security

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SLAMS WESTERN VERSION OF SYRIAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS ISSUE

The Russian Federation has invariably held the unequivocal and straightforward position that any use of chemical weapons by anyone is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances, and those responsible for such crimes must be held accountable.

However, the so-called red line set by President Obama in 2012, the crossing of which was supposed to trigger outside military intervention in the intra-Syrian conflict, was clearly the watershed moment in this story – which has been so unscrupulously distorted by our Western partners – about the use of toxic chemicals in Syria and then the use of actual chemical warfare agents. It was this decision that served as a starting point for a host of ensuing provocations by terrorist and extremist groups who used chemical weapons in an effort to discredit official Damascus and create an opportunity for the “friends of Syria” to use military force against a sovereign state. Up until then, even if there had been reports about the use of chemical weapons in that region, they concerned only Libya, where, in the absence of the Libyan state destroyed by NATO countries, non-state actors occasionally used mustard-filled artillery shells in local turf wars.