BEARDING PUTIN IN HIS DEN: Syria’s Chemical Weapons: The Russia Factor | Human Rights Watch

Carroll Bogert

September 26, 2013

Author(s): 

Carroll Bogert

Published in: 

Vedomosti (in Russian)

 

Russian diplomacy has dramatically changed the trajectory of Western response to the Syria crisis and put the Kremlin at the center of international negotiations to control Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. But the Russian government’s insistence that chemical weapons were used by rebel forces now places it on the fringes of a serious debate over what to do next to end the atrocities in that embattled country.

In his op-ed for the New York Times, President Putin made the case for pursuing diplomacy over military strikes in Syria. He also wrote that there is “every reason to believe” the attack was carried out by opposition forces to provoke a Western military intervention.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has continued to claim that the “obscure case of the August 21” attack was “clearly fabricated.” Last week in Damascus, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced that Russia would be analyzing new “evidence” from the Syrian government that exonerates their forces for the attack.

Syrian opposition forces are indeed responsible for serious crimes in their conduct of war, including attacks against civilians, summary executions, kidnappings, torture, and other abuses. They include extremist Islamist elements that should be of real concern. But they are not responsible for the August 21 chemical weapons attack, and a review of the evidence demonstrates that.

The United Nations inspection team remains the only independent group to have accessed the site of the attacks. When US military strikes against Syria appeared imminent, Russian diplomats urged the world to wait for the UN inspectors’ report. But now that the report points clearly to Syrian government responsibility for the attack, the same officials are dismissing it as “politicized,” ”biased,” and “one-sided.”

UN inspectors were able to visit sites and interview victims and eyewitnesses, but it was not within their mandate to state explicitly who they thought was responsible. But they have provided substantial evidence of Syrian government responsibility, and that evidence is backed up by a 21-page research report by Human Rights Watch, an independent, nongovernmental organization......

FULL ARTICLE HERE: Syria’s Chemical Weapons: The Russia Factor | Human Rights Watch

Dispatches: What Putin didn’t tell the American people | Human Rights Watch

September 12, 2013
 

by Anna Neistat


Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the second working session of the G20 Summit near St. Petersburg on September 6, 2013. © 2013 Reuters

It’s not what Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op-ed says that’s so worrisome; it’s what it doesn’t say. As a Russian and as someone who has been to Syria multiple times since the beginning of the conflict to investigate war crimes and other violations, I would like to mention a few things Putin overlooked...

There is not a single mention in Putin’s article, addressed to the American people, of  the egregious crimes committed by the Syrian government and extensively documented by the UN Commission of Inquiry, local and international human rights groups, and numerous journalists: deliberate and indiscriminate killings of tens of thousands of civilians, executions, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests. His op-ed also makes no mention of Russia’s ongoing transfer of arms to Assad throughout the past two and a half years.

The Russian president strategically emphasizes the role of Islamic extremists in the Syrian conflict. Yes, many rebel groups have committed abuses and atrocities. Yet Putin fails to mention that it is the Syrian government that is responsible for shooting peaceful protesters (before the conflict even started) and detaining and torturing their leaders – many of whom remain detained – and that the continued failure of the international community to respond to atrocities in Syria allows crimes on all sides to continue unaddressed.................

FULL ARTICLE HERE: Dispatches: What Putin didn’t tell the American people | Human Rights Watch

OBAMA'S FOLLIES WITH SYRIA: A Russian Bear in the Desert | The Weekly Standard

by Tod Lindberg

Russia was nominally opposed to the 2003 Iraq war but supported Security Council Resolution 1441, in November 2002, giving Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations” and promising “serious consequences” for the failure to do so. The United States expected to but couldn’t obtain a second Security Council resolution in early 2003 containing explicit authorization for the use of military force against the Hussein regime; the big problem then was not Russia, but France. And of course the United States was prepared to act on its own authority anyway, about which Russia could or would do nothing of consequence.

Similarly, Russia did not like the idea of NATO enlargement, especially into formerly Soviet territory, namely, the Baltics. But was Russia willing to, for example, act covertly to destabilize Lithuania in the hope of derailing U.S. enthusiasm for its inclusion in the enlargement round in 2004? No, it wasn’t (or couldn’t).

More recently, Russia was hardly enthusiastic about coming to the rescue of Libyan civilians as forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi closed in to crush the rebellion and—if Qaddafi’s own words were to be believed—exact reprisals on a mass scale. Certainly Russia was not in favor of toppling the Qaddafi regime. But Russia and China did voluntarily subscribe in 2005 at the United Nations World Summit to the principle of the “responsibility to protect”: that if a state fails to act to protect its populations from atrocities (or perpetrates atrocities), the international community acting through the United Nations may do so. And so Russia and China abstained on Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized the use of force to protect Libyan civilians................

FULL ARTICLE HERE: A Bear in the Desert | The Weekly Standard

PUTIN THE HYPOCRITE: Russian manufacturer to sell 10 or more MiGs to bloody Syrian regime | The Times of Israel

Amid reports of a delay in delivery of advanced S-300 air-defense missiles to Assad, new fighter jets deal could prove deadly to rebels.

MOSCOW — A Russian arms manufacturer says it is signing a contract to deliver at least 10 fighter jets to Syria.

Sergei Korotkov, general director of the MiG company that makes the jets, told Russian news agencies Friday that a Syrian delegation was in Moscow to discuss terms and deadlines of a new contract supplying MiG-29 M/M2 fighters to Syria.

FULL ARTICLE HERE: Russian manufacturer to sell 10 MiGs to Syria | The Times of Israel

Defected Syrian pilot says he made trips to Russia and Iran to ‘collect cash’ - Alarabiya.net English | Front Page

 A Ammon News handout photo supplied by Syrian activists shows the Syrian Air Force Russian-made MiG-21 plane that a pilot landed with at the King Hussein Air Base in northern Jordan on June 21, 2012. (AFP)

Al Arabiya -

A defected Syrian pilot told The Sunday Telegraph that he was part of the Syrian regime’s air fleet to Russia, where he amass money to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

The pilot, who asked the Telegraph to identify him as Nazim, said that he and his fellow pilots “flew a cargo plane two or three times a month” to collect funds that were used to allegedly support the regime........

FULL ARTICLE: Defected Syrian pilot says he made trips to Russia and Iran to ‘collect cash’ - Alarabiya.net English |

Syria opposition to boycott upcoming talks - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad's government have continued in the northern city [Reuters]

The most prominent Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), has announced it is pulling out of the upcoming Friends of Syria meeting in Rome and scheduled talks in Russia and the United States.


After missiles killed dozens in Aleppo on Friday, the SNC released a statement saying the move was to protest the lack of international condemnation of the "crimes committed against the Syrian people".

"Hundreds of civilians have been killed by Scud missile strikes. Aleppo, the city and the civilisation, is being destroyed systematically," the statement said.

"The Russian leadership especially bears moral and political responsibility for supplying the regime with weapons," it added, referring to Moscow's status as a leading ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"In protest of this shameful international stand, the coalition has decided to suspend its participation in the Rome conference for the Friends of Syria and decline the invitations to visit Russia and the United States."

FULL ARTICLE HERE: Syria opposition to boycott upcoming talks - Middle East - Al Jazeera English