Editorial erred in accusing Russia of war crimes

I am deeply disturbed by the editorial carried by your newspaper yesterday. I respect the position of the editorial board of The Nation, but with regard to the situation in Syria I have to challenge your view that Russia has committed war crimes in that country. I guess that the reason for this inaccurate position is your consistent reliance on biased information from a handful of sources and ignoring of information from other sources.

Let me assure you that Russian jet fighters have never carried out raids against civilians. The only targets for Russia’s Air Force are terrorists from ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

I highly doubt that it is a professional method to quote hysteric statements of the US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Permanent Representative of the UK to the UN Matthew Rycroft while refusing to quote Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who made a very convincing statement during the UN Security Council High-Level Briefing of the Situation in the Middle East and North Africa on September 21 in New York, not in a bid to safe face but with a purpose to expose the blunt lies disseminated by the Western countries and their mass media.

The Russian Foreign Ministry commented thus on the attack on the humanitarian convoy:

“At about 8pm local time on September 19, an incident whose circumstances have not yet been completely clarified, took place in Urum al Kubra, southwest of Aleppo. A convoy with humanitarian aid, that had reached storage warehouses by prior agreement between official Damascus and the UN, was being unloaded when it came under fire from an unspecified source. People were killed and wounded, including officials from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent who were escorting the consignment, and 18 lorries were seriously damaged.

“The incident took place in an area controlled by illegal paramilitary units and located about 7 kilometres from the site of active hostilities that resumed September 19 after Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists launched a large offensive against Syrian government forces’ positions. It should be noted that the leaders of certain illegal paramilitary units have repeatedly rejected and hampered the passage of humanitarian convoys in Syria. When the passage of this convoy was being coordinated, not all militant leaders welcomed the plan to deliver humanitarian relief aid. With this in mind, the Russian military used drones that monitored the humanitarian convoy until its arrival at the final destination on the afternoon of September 19.

“We indignantly reject the attempts by some foreign sponsors of illegal armed groups and terrorists in Syria to blame the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Air Force for allegedly ‘bombing’ the humanitarian convoy. According to ‘eyewitnesses’ from the White Helmets organisation that operates on militant-controlled territories and which is often quoted by the Western media, air-strikes commenced, and some activists reportedly heard the sound of helicopter engines.

“It appears that these questionable accusations, which are not backed by any facts, also aim to divert attention from the strange ‘mistake’ made by pilots of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition on September 17 when coalition planes bombed Syrian government forces near Deir ez-Zor.”

Kirill Barsky 

Russian ambassador to Thailand